Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Does Microsoft really have eighty employee levels?

If these numbers are accurate they put things into perspective though.

I see people on here and other forums who will swear blind that even basic engineers at big US tech companies are earning $750k after just a couple of years.

View on HN

No, It goes from 59 to 70. 80 level also exists but it's just for the CEO, I believe there is nothing between 70 and 80 (maybe there is 73 or something like that, but at any rate it's not continuous). It's a weird system

It's like the military then. The fact that there is a 101st airborne division does not imply the existence of 100 other airborne divisions.

I believe that there WERE 100 other airborne divisions in the past, they just do not exist anymore. World War II required a lot of divisions airborne or otherwise.

The military explicitly does not number their units in numeric order as a counter intelligence measure.

This differs by branch of service in the United States.

In the book 'Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins' by Annie Jacobsen, she mentions this effect when the US Army stood up the secretive 10th Special Forces after WWII. Even though it was the first of its kind the idea was that if the U.S.S.R found out about it they would worry there were 9 other such groups.

The UK actually has its regiments ordered by seniority

No. Divisions 1-25 were regular Army, 26-50 were National Guard, and 51-108 were draftees. They were not designated according to MOS. Some of the divisions were never actually populated, so there are gaps even within this.

Later on, existing divisions were designated according to type. Infantry is the 'default' designation. Cavalry units were designated, then Armor, then Airborne, and finally Mountain. I have no idea when Artillery got its own designation. Some units subsequently were designated Air Assault, and this includes the 101st, but it kept the Airborne title to honor the unit history.

Other branches have other policies, but this is how the Army structure evolved.

Airborne divisions were originally just seen as specialized infantry divisions. They were numbered in sequence with all other infantry divisions. Thus, its number does imply the existence of 100 other infantry divisions.

Perhaps Seal Team 6 is a better example then? AFAIK, the 6 was a misinformation technique.

Edit: Haha, went and checked. Damn the lying documentary I watched.

What do you mean? Wikipedia agrees that 6 was disinformation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAL_Team_Six

wrong comparison, military uses pay grades e1-9 for enlisted and o1-9 for officers, it is continuous.

So you can have a pay grade of o-pi or e-sqrt(2), although that would be quite irrational.

You can find most of this online. For software engineers(managers) and Product/Program Managers you start at 59 and go up to 67. At 68 you are a partner and there are very few IC from this level on. At level 70 you are EVP level. At 70+ you are CVP. Support starts at 56 and can go up to at least 61-62. I don't know about the other disciplines.

Recalling my time there, one tweak-- EVP > CVP so those are backward. There are a hand full of EVPs but quite a lot of CVPs running around. TBH Past Partner (68) I'm not sure the levels really matter much and I forget the pure Software Eng equivalents to those higher levels (Distinguished Engineer and Technical Fellow).

what the heck are EVPs and CVPs?

Executive Vice President and corporate Vice President.

They don't. Levels start at 59. No sure what the history is there.

Feels like a kind of Spinal Tap seniority index: “The volume of this amplifier starts at 59!”

For software, levels for non software go below 59 iirc.

Ahh, I was never sure if non-software are on that stack. That makes sense.

A long time ago they used to start hiring for software engineers at least at 57.

No, it starts even lower than that. The data center employees are usually in the 40s.

Retail employees are also on that list somewhere

I heard that it was done that way during a leveling revamp to avoid confusion with the previous scheme.

No, levels start at 56 possibly much lower.

I believe there was a large compensation change during the time of Steve Balmer when the stock was flat. The change switched the mix to more cash, less stock. Prior to that shift, levels started much lower. The levels were reset to 59+ after this change to reduce confusion over the previous compensation plans. That's my understanding. Yes, levels run 59 to 70 with anything above 70 being something like the CEO or a very early founder in a distinguished role.

Microsoft levels used to be 1-15 or something like that. In 2000, as part of "Comp 2000" update to levels and compensation, they changed the levels for a bunch of reasons (one of which was to make smaller, more frequent promos, which is why the bands now each span multiple levels). Each of existing levels was expanded to two or three separate levels. For example, a former level 10 position became either a level 58 or level 59 position. Employees were then placed in one of the newly created job levels. Managers were afforded some amount of discretion in this placement process.

To prevent confusion ("old 5 or new 5?"), they picked numbers that were clearly different from the old 1,2,3... system.

Also, note that the comp change to reduce stock and increase base happened sometime in 2003, not as part of the comp 2000 changes. That's also when the switch from stock options to awards happened.

I don't know about Microsoft, but at IBM for example engineers with a 4-year eng/CS degree start at band 6, but the bands below 6 do exist, just not for that role. I'm guessing it's similar at MS.

The people who designed their licensing models must have been involved in designing their employee levels...

They don't have 80 levels, their naming scheme for engineering just starts at 59 and goes up from there. Certainly more levels than most other companies though. You can view the leveling breakdown at https://levels.fyi

This is only true for engineering. Most business positions start at 58, and retail was in the 30's and 40's.

>Does Microsoft really have eighty employee levels?

Possibly. All the article says is

"the levels start at 59 and go beyond 80. Microsoft’s senior positions start at level 63, according to the crowdsourced tech compensation website Levels.fyi."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com