Düsseldorf On Monday morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed his staff directly. “Again and again we see that our talents are in great demand,” the manager wrote in an e-mail, praising the employees for their “admirable” work. “That’s why we are investing in each and every one of you for the long term today,” it said.
In other words, Microsoft’s employees are being recruited by the competition – and the top management of the group is responding with a significant increase in wages. The company is almost doubling the global budget for performance-based salary increases and increasing the annual share-based compensation programs, according to the memo published by the industry service “Geekwire”.
The payments mainly benefit employees from the lower and middle salary range of the total of 181,000 employees. Nadella writes that Microsoft has included inflation and rising living costs. Top positions from general manager and vice president are excluded.
With the higher salaries, Microsoft is responding to a more dissatisfied workforce. According to an internal survey, only two-thirds of the respondents were of the opinion that they would get a “good deal” at Microsoft. In the previous year, the figure was still at 73 percent, as reported by “Business Insider”.
It is unclear how much the 3,000 German employees in total will receive from Microsoft. “Performance-related budgets will vary from country to country and will be based on regional market data,” Nadella writes. The German press office did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Microsoft employees receive a basic salary plus bonuses and stock options. Nadella did not write anything about the absolute amounts of the increase. According to the “Glassdoor” website, a software engineer at Microsoft in Seattle earns $187,000 a year, a software development engineer earns $216,000 base salary.
Tough competition for Microsoft in Seattle
Microsoft’s spending on share-based compensation programs is public: it was $ 6.1 billion in the past fiscal year. The stock options are set for five years in order to keep the employees in the company.
According to reports on job platforms, employees below the top management level receive $10,000 to $150,000 annually in shares, depending on their career level. This amount should now increase by at least a quarter.
IT specialists are rare and highly sought after worldwide. According to the management consultancy McKinsey, the economy in Germany alone needs 780,000 additional developers or other specialists due to the increasing digitization of all industries.
At Microsoft’s headquarters in the greater Seattle area on the US west coast, the competition is particularly fierce. For a long time, the Windows manufacturer from Redmond had the job market for IT experts practically to himself. Meanwhile, Seattle-based Amazon is also actively recruiting workers, as are various start-ups and Google or Facebook, which maintain satellite offices there.
Last February, for example, Amazon announced that it would increase its maximum base salary from $ 160,000 to $ 350,000 to be able to survive in the “competitive labor market”.
