Microsoft employees created their own compensation spreadsheet, which highlights two companies.

      Approximately 600 Microsoft employees have contributed their salary information to an internally circulated crowdsourced spreadsheet, resulting in a depiction of a company that compensates two distinct groups. Base salaries range from $111,000 at level 59 to $280,000 at level 67, with roles in Cloud and AI reaching up to $450,000—information that Microsoft employees have sought since the company removed salary inquiries from its internal survey.

      Raises reported within the sample varied from 0% to 3.5%, which for many individuals aligns with or falls below inflation, while cash bonuses ranged from $2,000 to $110,000. The division within the company is most evident when it comes to stock compensation. Annual stock awards in this dataset varied from $10,000 to $1.4 million, with the higher amounts concentrated in Cloud and AI; such equity can significantly alter the nature of a job beyond just its salary.

      The reported pattern indicates that engineers working on generative AI projects receive higher initial grants and more regular out-of-cycle refreshers compared to their peers at the same levels in traditional software departments. Therefore, level alone no longer defines an employee's earnings.

      This marks a notable departure from Microsoft’s historical operations, where the level system was intended to ensure that a level 65 in one department would be comparable to a level 65 in another, and significant discrepancies in annual vesting at the same level undermine the framework's relevance.

      The Xbox division exemplifies the opposite scenario. In this sample, base salaries cap at around $218,000, which is considerably less than what comparable senior roles earn in Cloud and AI, despite the games division having been a strategic priority with $69 billion in recent acquisitions.

      Out-of-cycle refreshers are the primary mechanism behind these discrepancies, deserving of explanation. These are additional stock grants given outside the annual review process, generally to retain employees likely to be approached by competitors, thus favoring those whom the market is currently pursuing over those who have excelled.

      The individuals facing this disparity are not marginal; engineers maintaining Windows, developer tools, and established cloud services provide the cash flow that funds AI infrastructure investments, and many are now being tasked with adding generative features to their products without any corresponding salary increase.

      This situation is not unique to Microsoft. Anthropic has been offering the highest salaries in the industry, with its CEO expressing surprise that people accept them purely for financial reasons, and the entire sector has been engaged in a bidding war for a limited pool of researchers over the past two years.

      What sets Microsoft apart is the contrast between its payroll dynamics and the larger context. The company has conducted layoffs, introduced its first voluntary retirement program, and participated in a broader trend within Big Tech of reallocating payroll toward AI capital expenditures.

      In this framework, a 0% raise has a different connotation, especially in a year marked by record infrastructure spending and million-dollar compensation packages available just a level or two away.

      Pay transparency laws have also illuminated some of these issues. Several U.S. states now mandate salary ranges in job postings, allowing employees to often see what new hires are offered for similar roles and making it easier to calculate the disparity with their previous raises.

      As always, caution is warranted with the sample. Six hundred submissions represent significantly less than 1% of Microsoft's roughly 223,000 workforce, the data is self-reported and unverified, and those with exceptionally positive or negative outcomes are more inclined to share their information than those in the middle.

      Microsoft has not provided any comment. Crowdsourced pay data like this tends to emerge when employees lose faith in official communication channels, and a company that has eliminated the pay question from its own survey has fewer grounds to object to its staff conducting their own inquiries.