Your Grant Grew 25.4%: It Stops at Director

At a glance

• The shift: Grants grow fastest one level below director and have stopped above it [1].
• The number: 25.4%, the rise in the median grant below director since 2024 [1].
• The risk: Buyouts still price packages in weeks of base pay, leaving the biggest line unpublished [2].

Two pay mixes, one offer email

Microsoft ran a narrower version of this in April. A retirement buyout went to about 8,750 United States staff at senior director level and below whose age plus years of service reached 70, and roughly 30% took it [3]. The company booked a $900 million charge for that plan in April, then cut 4,800 jobs in July [3]. On 26 October it widened the net to Microsoft job level 70 and below in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India. The new offer has no age or tenure test, performance no longer matters, and a decision is due in the first week of December [3]. Carta’s data, out two days later, shows what such an offer is now up against [1].

Carta reads its own figures as a story about management layers. Its report says firms “seem to believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is simultaneously reducing the need for multiple layers of management and increasing the capabilities of top-level” staff [1]. My read: the thinning does the work, not the generosity. Remove the layer above someone and the market has to bid for the work itself, and it bids in paper — a bigger starting grant, handed out more often. At the top that starting grant has stopped growing, so a senior person’s raise has to come from a new title rather than from the grant that arrives with it.

The buyout was built for the older mix. Its cash is set by tenure. Staff at Microsoft job level 64 and below get one week of base pay for every six months served. Levels 65 to 67 get two, and the cap is 39 weeks, as reported from offers seen by Business Insider [4]. The rule pays for time served, not for the work someone does.

Its stock term shows up in the company’s briefed description as four words: “continued stock vesting” — the schedule on which stock becomes yours — with no length given [3]. So a senior engineer whose grant just rose a quarter gets a sum worked out from the line that did not. Grant size against base pay decides the package.

By the numbers

• 25.4% — grant growth below director: The rise in the median starting grant for the level under director since January 2024 [1].
• 3.9% — grant growth at director level: The same measure over the same span, about a sixth of the pace [1].
• 39 weeks of base pay — the cash cap: The most the standard severance formula pays, three quarters of a year [4].

What the offer letter leaves out

The public reports do not agree on the stock term, and the gap is the story. GeekWire, briefed by the company, says the package includes “continued stock vesting” and gives no length [3]. An advisory firm reading offer papers for Microsoft staff says some who qualify may keep twelve months of scheduled vesting after a 31 December exit [5]. The note itself names neither figure and says only that staff will get details by email [2]. What I keep circling is how much of a senior package now sits inside that unnamed clause. A grant worth several years of base pay turns on a sentence the note does not contain.

What I’d watch:

• Who qualifies: Sales is not taking part, and some engineering groups and head-office teams are out, so team placement matters as much as level [3].
• The earnings line: Microsoft reported earnings two days after the note, the place where a plan like this first shows a cost; the April buyout carried a $900 million charge in that line [3].

Where the comparison slips

Carta’s figures come from private firms on its platform, where a grant is a share of a company with no daily price. Microsoft pays in stock that a public market values every trading day, so the two sets describe different things even when the percentages look alike. Seniority still pays more in dollars, too. Carta reports the median starting salary for a senior director was more than twice that of the level above entry, and a faster rate of climb is not a bigger number [1].

What I keep returning to is the mismatch in what the two numbers are measuring. The finding is narrower than “juniors out-earn directors” and firmer than “grants went up.” The market has re-priced how fast it adds stock at each level, and the exit offers beside it are still written for a package where salary was most of the money. The decision is whether to weigh the published cash or the unprinted grant line; the total compensation visualizer sets the two side by side.

Related reading

• Blueprint Behind Giniloh Money Flow

Sources

1. Carta, “State of Startup Compensation: H1 2026”, 28 October 2026 — https://carta.com/data/startup-compensation-h1-2026
2. Microsoft, “Introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer”, Amy Coleman, 26 October 2026 — https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/10/26/introducing-a-voluntary-exit-offer
3. GeekWire, “Microsoft makes new ‘voluntary exit’ offer to about a quarter of its workforce, including some execs”, 26 October 2026 — https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-makes-new-voluntary-exit-offer-to-more-than-a-quarter-of-its-workforce-including-some-execs
4. Business Insider, “Microsoft Is Offering Buyouts. Read the Memo.”, October 2026 — https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-is-offering-buyouts-read-the-memo-2026-10
5. Avier Wealth Advisors, “Microsoft’s New Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO)”, 27 October 2026 — https://avieradvisors.com/microsofts-new-voluntary-exit-offer-veo-what-you-need-to-know-before-deciding