Microsoft tops $4T in valuation: Great news for MSFT, not so great for workers
64 comments
·August 4, 2025mikestew
nlawalker
Stock price doesn't have any effect on the value of ESPP at Microsoft, but you're right that it does on the RSUs. At least one company exec has directly proposed this as a counterbalance to "no pay raises" (From 2023: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-exec-defends-compa...).
That said, anyone can own Microsoft stock. With respect to current employees - the common wisdom has always been not to own too much stock in your employer, with the rationale that if things aren't going well and the stock is tanking, you're likely to get laid off and then you're even worse off. But these days I'm thinking that the opposite is true, at least in bigtech: The more likely scenario is that you get laid off regardless and the stock goes up in response.
dhruvrrp
Well, not that great for current workers either. Microsoft RSUs are usually 20% (compared to 40-80% in other big tech) or less for most employees, and on average msft has 30-50% less total compensation than other big tech.
All this stock upside might put some people's compensation to their true market value, but even that is based on tenure and historical stock vests.
s1artibartfast
Would they be better off without the stock upside? I dont think so.
rs186
Remember, today we are talking about "stock price is up", but tomorrow the price may be down. What the parent said does not change regardless -- Microsoft employees are not as well compensated compared to other companies, and the layoff is real.
knuppar
Retention was never a priority at MS. Lower comp compared to G/Meta/Amazon, no refreshers, poor special stock awards, tenure-based promo queue, (...). If RTO becomes a reality I think the calculus of staying at MS will be tipped over for many.
mikestew
Over 25 years ago MSFT was doing the same thing. Amazon, Google, and Facebook didn't yet exist, so we were losing candidates to Oracle because MSFT paid so little. When Microsoft finally wiped the sleep from their eyes, my next review period saw me getting a 23% raise at review time, some from performance and a lot from Microsoft finally catching up to the rest of the industry because they couldn't hire anyone (I'd say it was also a demonstration of how badly I was getting screwed, but MSFT options were hot back then).
Will it happen again a generation later? Depends on how many candidates go to Amazon instead, I guess.
theflyinghorse
In this economy the calculus will be “hold on to your job at all costs and hope that next round of quarterly layoffs hiring doesn’t touch you”
null
CobrastanJorji
I don't know what a tenure-based promo queue is, but from the name, wouldn't it in fact be extremely focused on retention?
missedthecue
And it doesn't seem to be a bad strategy for their market fit, at least not for the last 20 years.
apwell23
> tenure-based promo queue
i wouldn't mind this
aeternum
It's actually been great for ex-workers. Most of their RSUs are much more valuable because the company has pushed for efficiency which has attracted investors and significantly increased market value.
While there have been layoffs, companies are generally still hiring and often employees can overlap severance with a new role.
downrightmike
"big guns" aka betting the future on something nebulous and the true price that is costs is still not being given to consumers of that service. Like Azure, they'll lock you in and raise rates. That's the business model
ulfw
Until they get laid off next
Please.
vouaobrasil
Companies shouldn't ever be allowed to be so wealthy or powerful. This sort of power allows them to bypass legal regulations, squash small companies (something MS has been doing for a long time), force technology on people faster than they can react (think of the average clueless user that will just use anything MS puts on Windows), and create a true state of anti-competition (what kind of small company can compete with MS and not be bought out).
The only reason why they do exist is because the people with the money are the people with the power.
betaby
> Companies shouldn't ever be allowed to be so wealthy or powerful.
I see MS as a US gov approved monopoly. I didn't check their SEC filings, but I suspect that US gov is a number one buyer, while various EU countries combined make number two. That's a coercion to me, not software business.
vouaobrasil
I would agree with that. And if that is so, it makes it even more apparent how broken our system is. The United States after all was built on decent values but without mechanisms to safeguard the average American from the interplay and long-term effects of very advanced technology interacting with the free market economy.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
I wonder if a more-organized democracy would buy them out and make them state-owned.
Terms like
- You won, Windows is very popular, we are going to buy it and open source it, no more ads, no more opt-out telemetry
- Same with Office
- Same with Github
- Maybe they can keep running Azure, since it's unpopular
- XBox and Kinect and all the hardware stuff can stay private since it's not a monopoly and not de-facto public infrastructure
I wish I could live to see government that is both good and powerful, you know
thewebguyd
I would think so, given how important (whether we at HN like it or not) their stack has become, it's basically critical infrastructure at this point for a lot of industries.
I think I could see that happening to several companies, not just MS as well - once something gets so huge that it would be detrimental to the survival of a nation if it failed, it gets nationalized.
> - Maybe they can keep running Azure, since it's unpopular
That I'm not sure about though. Azure is unpopular with SaaS, but it's increasingly popular with non-tech enterprises, as well as basically anyone that remotely competes with Amazon. Good chance that if a company's core product isn't SaaS, they are on Azure.
vouaobrasil
That sounds like a good partial solution. Unfortunately, it's easier for governments to use tax dollars to expand, create more comfortable positions for federal civil servants, and watch the money roll in.
ryanackley
Is it <waves hands towards the sky> AI? or is it years of overhiring?
There was a great article I found on HN recently about how the recent layoffs in big tech are actually the result of overhiring for years in a talent arms race.
Like, is AI now doing the former work of 25,000 people at Microsoft? Probably not.
pm90
Almost certainly not AI, just more users going from hosted windows solutions to azure + office upsell (eg with Teams). Microsoft pretty much dominates the non Apple Desktop ecosystem and is used heavily by healthcare, defense and manufacturing industries.
sylens
As someone who has been looking to lessen my reliance on all things Microsoft, the hardest thing for me to quit has been C# and .NET. It's just a great combination of developer experience, speed, and features. It's also probably the least problematic part of Microsoft to continue using, but it still doesn't feel great.
jjice
dotnet has gone pretty open source these days, no? I guess it may depend on the rest of your environment - maybe the Windows specific stuff like forms and WPF are still under them?
Other than that, I think you don't need too much dependence on them, depending on how you look at them controlling it. It being OSS personally gives it more stability since it can always be forked if they pull some nonsense.
anonymars
Not so thrilled as a customer either
missedthecue
Their Azure customer service is beyond atrocious. I have 6 days old completely untouched tickets on their paid support plan.
bediger4000
There's never been a better time to leave either
bix6
What is your business using instead of Excel?
OtherShrezzing
90% of the business just uses Sheets. There's a few accountants & finance people who still need Excel.
kfajdsl
Google sheets
mschuster91
If I were to guess some frankenstein SAP system
bongodongobob
Sure, just let me run this multimillion dollar multi-year project past management. Reasoning? "Lol M$ is sux"
swarnie
If i could even find a comparable OS/Productivity/Communications package to replace the existing i'd lose my own job for proposing it.
the__alchemist
Don't mave many options on the OS front. Windows performance gets worse and worse, increasing risk of corp enshittification, my task manager stopped working recently, but... I find Linux's workflow too rooted in multi-user systems and servers.
alexjplant
> I find Linux's workflow too rooted in multi-user systems and servers.
Out of genuine curiosity (not *nix/OSS fanboying) - how so? macOS has been a BSD for a quarter of a century and modern Windows was designed by a guy who cut his teeth at DEC on VMS. Virtually all modern computer OSes have roots in time-sharing systems.
mg
If Nadella grows Microsoft into the AI era as fast as Gates did in the Desktop era, it would become a 100 trillion dollar company within the next ten years:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marek-gibney_microsofts-story...
gberger
If I place a grain of rice on the first square of a chess board and double the amount on each step, I'd have 18 quintillion grains of rice.
mg
It happens.
Life started with self-replicating molecules. And ramped up all the way to structures like the human body which consists not just of quintillions of molecules but of billions of quintillions of molecules.
kevinventullo
Windows Desktops were basically a monopoly. There are currently no monopolies in the AI era, and I wouldn’t even consider MS a first-tier competitor.
Andrex
Nadella is no Gates and Ballmer wasn't either. There is only one Bill Gates and I doubt history will repeat itself.
It's a fun what if, I guess.
f1shy
And even if Gates were there, is his luck still the same: I see constantly attribute to work and intelligence what is also a big chunk of luck and opportunities. Yes he seized it, but could it do it again? How much was luck?
Related: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dz2vRqxf0HI&pp=0gcJCccJAYcqIYz...
pizzathyme
That number seems completely arbitrary. Why not $10 trillion or $1 quadrillion?
mg
Because, as can be seen in the chart, during the desktop era, Microsoft grew at 60% per year.
Growing at 60% per year for ten years is a factor of slightly over 100.
delecti
Microsoft's overall value was also much more tied to their performance in the desktop market. The whole company can grow at 60% yoy if 60% of the company doubles in value. AI is not bringing them any revenue, and double nothing is still nothing.
tonyhart7
Microsoft lose their chance at mobile/ads era, they better get shit together if they didn't want to be next IBM
epolanski
So Microsoft would be multiple times the GDP of the biggest economy in the world?
buyucu
Nadella is a glorified excel salesman. He has no vision about the future of technology.
moooo99
I have my doubts that any big tech leadership has visions for technology anymore. We seem to be heading straight to a boring tech dystopia, at least if the current enshittification trajectory continues.
fHr
More H1B visas eh? Very bad for American tech workers.
SilverElfin
Not so great news for smaller companies either. MS continues to use their muscle to gain from each super cycle without having to work for it the way smaller companies do. Their size alone makes competition unfair.
wonderwonder
Compound AI layoffs with outsourcing and its a dangerous time to be a software engineer in the US. I look at the current job environment with dismay. I really don't like my current role and it provides almost no benefit to my resume as i work in such a specialized niche industry but it pays well and I see no alternative. So I just clock in each day, do what i have to do and clock out dreading the next morning when I have to clock in again. I have maybe 2 years until this position winds down so am trying to do whatever I can to prepare for whats next.
benreesman
Insulate your house with cash as much as possible, I understand better than most that saving is possible sometimes and not others, but to the degree possible? Stack it up.
Cash on hand is leverage in tech employment just like anywhere, but amolified during periods of structural demand shift. If one can get a year or three of easy runway, one can reskill/upskill into stuff with demand shifting into it. Right now I'm screwing around with Jetson boards and stuff like that: LLMs may cone and go but robots are here to stay.
And even the BATNA of "I'll go do OSS full time for a year" is leverage with your current employer. People with options are less likely to be fucked with in the first place.
Well, maybe not so great for ex-workers. Current employees still have RSUs and employee stock purchase plan, so those shares are making bank. OTOH, my Microsoft-employed spouse also says "no significant pay raises this review period", and I think that's the "not so great for workers" part that TFA missed. MSFT is going big guns, but doesn't have money for increased compensation.