Leak of Microsoft Salaries Shows Fight for Higher Compensation

The numbers range from $40,000 to $320,000 and reveal key details about how pay works at big tech companies

Photo: Stephen Brashear/Getty

Nearly 400 Microsoft employees are sharing their salaries with each other to better determine whether they’re being fairly compensated.

The effort stems from a private Facebook group, Young Microsoft FTE, where full-time employees (FTEs) gather to discuss the company. The salaries are collected in a shared Google spreadsheet.

“Share your anonymous info so we can all get paid more together,” reads a header at the top of the form.

The spreadsheet gives a detailed look at how compensation breaks down for some Microsoft employees. Data points include years of experience, years at Microsoft, percentage of merit-based raises, and base pay, as well as stock, and cash bonuses. Some employees also noted special stock dispensations, indicative of a signing bonus or a milestone achievement. The spreadsheet did not note gender, a category that is often used as a rallying point for pay transparency. The nearly 400 employees who entered their salaries are also just a small subset of Microsoft’s total workforce of 144,000.

Pay transparency is an enduring issue in the technology sector. Jobs are promised to be lucrative, but there is little insight into how each company places value on an employee.

Internal salary sharing is an annual occurrence at Microsoft around this time of year, when many employees are notified of raises or promotions, a Microsoft employee tells OneZero.

OneZero was provided access to the Microsoft document by a former employee. A current employee who is also in the Young Microsoft FTEs group independently confirmed that the document was authentic.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment regarding the spreadsheet.

Pay transparency is an enduring issue in the technology sector. Tech workers enter the field on promises of highly lucrative positions, but there is little insight into how each company places value on an employee. At most tech companies, seniority is supposedly ranked on a level scale. The higher the level, the more power the employee has, and the more they are paid. An employee is hired onto a certain level, and can be promoted to a new level. Microsoft employees are situated on a scale from level 59 to 80, while Amazon employees are ranked L4-L10, and Facebook employees receive a status that is on a scale from E3 to E9.

The data from the Young Microsoft FTEs group is not indicative of every Microsoft employee. The typical employee who submitted data to the spreadsheet was a Level 62 software engineer based in Washington state. They’ve been at that level for one year and have been at Microsoft for three. They report five years of total experience, and did not get a promotion this year. Their base pay is $150,000. They got a $20,000 bonus in cash, and another $15,000 in stock.

The employee data also shows that level, rather than overall experience or time spent working at Microsoft, is the greatest indicator of compensation. While some Level 62 employees, who are one step below senior engineer, are paid more than those in a Level 65 principal engineer role, they are rare in the data.