Does Microsoft give annual stock refreshers? If they do, how good are they?
Yes they do and depending on your level and performance it could be big
Poor, senior from 0 to 35k vested in 5 years. Most seniors get around 17k. New hires 0 to 10k.
The best I was able to manage at L64 was ~$70k worth of stock. I was a strong performer.
I got 30k few years ago as L62 engineer
Must have been absolute max. I got $28k this year as L63, and I was above average (target = $17k at 63)
glassdoor.com is going to give you way better data.
Junk. Target for new grads is 3k stock over 5 years.. enough said
Targets... 63/17k, 64/24k, 65/36k
Surprising to see that eBay offers more than twice the refresher as Microsoft.
If MSFT just increases the stock target our comp. would be comparable to FB or G. It sucks that we have excellent base and cash bonus, but stock refreshers are peanuts!
Also want to point out that 5 or 6 years ago they reduced stock awards to appease all the whiny employees that too much of their comp was tied up in vesting stock.
Yup. Still wasn't huge. But at the time the stock had hovered around $25-30 for 10 years, so a lot of people were just cashing in the stock anyways
True stock price has more than doubled since then. Which by finally going 2.5x up in price, and reducing our stock awards, actually screwed us out of a lot of potential cash. Doing some quick math in my head, I probably lost 70-90k for an extra 5-10k in cash a year. I liked the bigger stock awards personally. Hind sight is 20/20 though...
They do - although when I was there they weren't very big (~20-40k a year as senior dev vesting over 5 years)
(...possibly because I wasn't exactly a superstar)
Haha. $17k is target at L63. I was above average this year and got $28k. My cash bonus was far bigger than stock refreshers