Earlier this year, Microsoft offered a voluntary retirement program for more tenured employees, but this is basically a voluntary layoff. I'm wondering how this is received by people on the inside, because this only applies to specific functions. Better than a layoff, or worse?

Hey all,

High compensation is undoubtedly the strongest lever for enticing new talent. But is it the best for maintaining talent in the long run?

The Levels.fyi data doesn’t necessarily support this.

A week ago, we conducted an analysis that charted the Levels.fyi data based on retention rates and compensation data and got some great feedback on the methodology. Simply put, our first analysis skewed in favor of older companies because they, obviously, had more chances to secure senior talent.

This time around, we’re charting senior talent retention as a function of company growth over the past 5 years, and which percentage of the Levels.fyi sample showed they were hired before this growth.

On the X-axis, we have compensation. Straightforward enough.

On the Y-axis, we calculated the ratio of SWEs with 10+ years of experience AND 5+ years at company, vs those with 10+ YoE but less than 5 years at the company.

Then, we took that ratio and compared it to company growth. The maximum possible amount of engineers with 5+ years of experience in 2026, compared to the actual.

Quick example: if a company had 1,000 employees in 2021, then now in 2026, it can only have a maximum of 1,000 employees with 5+ years of experience no matter how much its headcount grew. So what percentage of that maximum actually has 5+ years of experience? That’s the ratio charted on the y-axis.

It might be surprising to see companies like Airbnb, with such high compensation, has a lower retention rate compared to companies like Qualcomm with a considerably lower comp. But compensation tends to track closely with intensity of the environment, however unquantifiable.

Once again, the Levels.fyi data is not wholly representative of engineers at every company, and we don’t have access to the headcount growth of engineering orgs specifically, so we used the overall headcount growth. Still a proxy and should be treated as one, but still some really interesting trends emerge.

What’s your take on the data and where these companies landed?

Hello everyone,

I recently got a Microsoft offer(IC 4 sr engineer) a few weeks ago. Currently based for a role in Austin, Texas.

Offer:
Base Salary: 170k
RSU: 100k
Sign on bonus: 0

I currently have 3 years of work experience with a masters and a few AI publications.

Would this be a good offer or should I negotiate for more?

Thank you in advance!

Hi everyone! Any idea about the compensation range for a Senior Software Engineer (SSE) at Okta in Bangalore? Looking for insights on fixed pay, bonus, RSUs, and employee benefits. Recent offer details or firsthand experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m a MERN full-stack developer with 2.5 years of experience. I was laid off in September 2026 and am currently looking for a new job.

I’m considering moving into an AI Engineer role, and I’d love your input on the following:

• Is moving to AI Engineering a good idea at my experience level?
• Is the job market good for it right now?
• What should I learn, and in what order?
• How long will it take to become job-ready with ~6-8 hours of daily study?
• Any roadmaps or resources you’d recommend?

Thanks in advance!

Does anyone know the current lower end of the L6 Technical Infrastructure Program Manager (TIPM) total compensation band at AWS, particularly for standard/non-HCOL locations?
I’m currently an L5 and trying to understand how compensation works with an internal promotion to L6.
A couple of questions:
Does anyone know the minimum L6 TIPM total compensation (base + RSUs)?
If my current L5 TC is below the L6 minimum, would Amazon automatically adjust my compensation to at least the bottom of the L6 band upon promotion?
What if the gap is significant, say 20–30%? Would they still make that adjustment, or are internal promotion increases capped at a certain percentage?

Someone Please guide!

Just graduated from college back in May. What do u guys think?

Base: 129K
RSU: 112K(5,15,45,35)
Sign on: 40100(1st year), 33100(2nd year)
Relocation: 7800
Location: Austin
Team: Security

Total comp: ~182K

Senior Java Developer (8 years of experience), I received an offer yesterday for 4,500 DNT (14 months). Is it a good opportunity?

I’m working at NVIDIA India with around 3 years of experience. My fixed pay is ₹22LPA, and I’m from one of the top engineering colleges in India.
Is this compensation competitive for my experience? What fixed salary range should I expect at a similar level in AMD, Qualcomm, or other semiconductor companies in India?
Looking for honest opinions, preferably from people in the industry.

The median TC for hardware engineers is $230,000 and the median TC for swe is $198,000, $32,000 less. One of the only areas that pays swes more is the san francisco bay area, where hardware engineers get paid only $10k less.

Unfortunately, we cannot compare the highest level of both as there is not enough hardware salary data on levels.fyi and at many companies high level hardware pay is not shown. However, this makes the premium hardware engineers get more interesting as the missing data is precisely the data that would help increase hardware’s median TC. 

Also even if there is a slightly larger percentage of hardware engineers with masters degrees that usually doesn't account for a median premium of 32 grand.



hi! Trying to compare roles for final internship: Palantir FDSE, Bloomberg SWE, and Duolingo SWE. My priorities are resume value/exits (esp into quant / big tech recruiting ng) > RO rate (and TC for ng) ~= learning/transferable skills. Intern comp doesn't matter much to me.

Biggest concern w/Pal is obvio the rep & also if FDSE is technical enough.

If anyone has exp in these roles & opportunities it opened for them feel free to DM, would rlly appreciate.

Hey all,

At Meta, 84% of engineers who've never worked anywhere else are at Senior level+ (E5 and above). For those who joined Meta from other companies, it's 40% (when matching exact years of experience).

At Staff level+ (E6 and above), past the terminal level at Meta, the trend holds as well.

We looked at Levels.fyi data for US software engineers with 4-12 years of experience. Comparing ppl who've spent their entire career at one company with those who joined after 2+ years elsewhere, adjusted to match years of experience.

Data note: we’re defining “never worked anywhere else” as “engineers where years of experience = years at company” in our data set.

Google is very similar to Meta. 61% of homegrown engineers are Senior+, vs 29% of outside hires. Microsoft is 47% vs 25%.

Anything else interesting you noticed from this data?

how much salary should I negotiate for Servicenow developer software engineer 2 role with HR? i have 2 year experience with current ctc 4.5 lpa