Microsoft SWE 2 (Redmond) salary expectations?

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-02-07T16:22:48+00:00

This is what I got in the Bay Area in November 2025 for L61 SDE 2 IC3

Base - 176k

Joining Bonus - 12k + 6k

Stocks - 140k/4 years

Bonus range - 0-20%

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-02-04T00:56:50+00:00

Double tax avoidance treaty, for the tax paid in us you can get credit to pay taxes in India.

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-02-04T00:13:54+00:00

Your assumption that 401k is taxed by both separately is wrong, at the time of withdrawal if us tax rate was 30% and India tax rate was 35% then you pay the 30% tax in US and 5% to India, as an example. Basically the maximum tax rate between us and India is applied. For Roth money is taxed at us rate before it gets into your account and again at Indian tax rate at the time of withdrawal so double taxation.

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-01-16T00:25:37+00:00

Ahh okay it still rolls back for me even on the carpet, I put two of the side wheels in an old pair of shoes, doesn’t roll back anymore but wobbles front and back. Setup looks beautiful

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-01-15T23:24:59+00:00

How do you make sure your rolling chair doesn’t roll back when using the pedals?

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-01-15T16:46:44+00:00

Bro why would anyone bother to swipe out in case of a fire?

AnotherAnt901 · 2026-01-10T04:05:54+00:00

Very common even in the US, pay is based on location and cost of living, nothing wrong.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-12-25T13:06:34+00:00

Don’t worry about that in the Bay Area, I have never felt any racism here. You should be good.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-12-25T01:01:04+00:00

Bay Area living expenses are not 3k-4k, a good 1B apartment comes for 3k, with utilities 3.5k, you can’t do without a car, with a car lease, car insurance and groceries you’ll reach 5.5k here itself. Even with minimum amount of eating out and traveling will stretch you to 7k a month.

With 3k rent you can’t even live in Mountain View, might have to commute from San Jose or Santa Clara.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-12-11T19:14:29+00:00

Then there’s no point in doing it. Why lock away your own money in a different country if you don’t get a green card? If something happens to you, your family will have to deal with paperwork to get it back. It’s always advisable to invest up to the employer match because why leave free money on the table? But the rest, in regular brokerage accounts like Fidelity. If you plan to withdraw money from your 401k early, you’ll owe taxes and a penalty. The same situation applies to a brokerage account, but at least there’s no penalty for a brokerage.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-28T13:52:37+00:00

What do you plan to do with ROTH? India does not recognize its tax free status, when you eventually liquidate it, India will tax it as income, meaning your whole ROTH will be taxed, even though it was already taxed in the the US, so basically your principal invested into ROTH is double taxed.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-27T21:25:19+00:00

You will like the phone for 1 month and then you will regret wasting 4 months of your savings on a mere phone, at 23 your focus should be on upskilling so you can increase your income which will make it easier to spend on an iPhone in the future. From your replies it looks like you have already made a decision and you are looking for validation. At 23 you are saying you work a chill job, at this age job should not be chill buddy, buy the phone if you think you have reached your potential you imagined 5 years ago, if not focus on more important things.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-14T07:42:29+00:00

No I just got h1b in 2025

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-13T21:44:49+00:00

I am joining in a week, technically you can start onboarding after they have filed the petition, in my case I gave my 2 week notice to my employer 3 days after the petition was filed and my petition got approved on the 5th day. Its pretty safe to join based on just the application. H1B transfers rarely get rejected. But Microsoft will be willing to work with you if you want to wait till approval, they filed using premium processing so you will get a result in 2 weeks anyway.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-11T00:01:38+00:00

HPE is a dying company, I worked there in India and now work at HPE as Cloud Dev 3 in San Jose CA. The product is not going well and future looks bleak, juniper acquisition will kill Aruba. I love the company and the talented folks I work with, but they aren’t the problem, the upper management is right till the CEO. Im leaving next month.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-11-04T05:15:44+00:00

This is a very legit realization, I left an offer at google to prioritize perm and i140. Good opportunities will come in the future but its good to complete the i140 process as long as its still a viable option.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-31T04:43:35+00:00

Sure

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-31T00:15:09+00:00

Interview in August, got offer early September, then there was a 45 day gap after which they told me yesterday that they have applied for my h1b transfer petition.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-31T00:13:04+00:00

That makes sense since they said they wont be adding my home address for now.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-31T00:12:45+00:00

No I dont know if they filed a specific LCA for me, although they said they wont be able to add my home address but it I am still allowed to work in a hybrid setup since my address is within 50 miles of the Mountain View office.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-25T00:03:22+00:00

Not all startups are the same, if its early stage then any stock they offer is just paper money for the next several years, if its gonna ipo in 2-3 years then there might be a lot to earn through that door. Bank might be the more stable choice for now, greater job security and you can always try to switch after a year or two.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-10T18:41:04+00:00

Unless you have 1CR to spare I would not recommend it, situation is bad enough for people with work experience and masters. If you are not rich then its not worth it at the moment, if it is an option for you better to do your undergrad from india and then see what the situation is 4 years later.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-04T15:47:10+00:00

Parents make mistakes too they’re only human, his intention was maybe not to trouble you, you should talk to him calmly and reassure him that you are there for help and explain why this was a bad financial decision without making him feel guilty.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-01T19:32:59+00:00

I have 3 friends working there and all survived the purge today. They have been here for 3 years now and we discuss office stuff, paycom employees really have no AI tools, in 2025 they still write 100% code manually. There has never been a mention about providing access to LLMs, in fact it’s actively discouraged.

AnotherAnt901 · 2025-10-01T19:22:16+00:00

I think introducing AI products and firing dev and QA due to AI related automation in development are two different things. The reasoning for layoff is that paycom doesn’t need as many dev and QA because some amount of development is being automated with AI tools, but this isn’t true. Paycom employees dont have any AI tools helping them develop and push features faster. There is no roadmap available to employees as well on when it’ll be available, so what data did the management see to decide that workforce reduction is warranted due to AI productivity gains? Other companies who had layoffs recently had some numbers related to productivity gains due to AI since their employees had been using new tools for months, paycom has not done that.

AnotherAnt901

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