alt Hacker News>The best fresh graduates from the top colleges went to Google and Facebook in the last decade -- because they paid significantly more -- and Microsoft picked up the rest.
1. The best new grads are absolutely not going to Google or Meta. There are many far sexier companies. As a CS grad, landing in big tech is mostly regarded as having settled for mediocrity.
2. Microsoft's compensation for early career is competitive with Google and Meta (at least for the first couple of years; Meta will grow your level faster and Google gives better annual RSU refreshers, but many people don't know this and go by the offer's face value). I don't think there's much of a difference in the talent that they can pick up.
Microsoft also aggressively sops up the best talent in Tier 2 geos -- it's unlikely that the best devs in the Bay Area work at Microsoft but some of the best devs in Vancouver or Atlanta probably work at Microsoft.
Replies
That’s an interesting modern perspective.
I would say though that you’re both correct. Satya came in 2014 and during the last 11 years I would say that the majority of that is as the GP described.
I’m not sure when what you are describing became the outside perspective, but I suspect somewhere around 2019-2022, when Google lost a very large amount of its shine as the former Oracle Execs started to take over fully.
>Microsoft's compensation for early career is competitive with Google and Meta (at least for the first couple of years; Meta will grow your level faster and Google gives better annual RSU refreshers
It's not. Microsoft's stock grants are a joke. I left Microsoft after 8 years with ~36k in unvested stock (vesting over 4-5 years) and a title of Senior (L63). Both Google and Meta offered me a downlevel (L4) for a 40% increase in total comp and with annual stock refreshers significantly larger than 5 years worth of stock grants at MSFT.
Microsoft starts to become competitive around Principal/Staff, sort of, but from a compensation perspective working at them at a junior/midlevel/senior level is a huge mistake.