After 15,000 layoffs, Microsoft boss Nadella's pay climbs 22% to $96.5 million

[midian182]

What just happened? In a year when Microsoft has announced over 15,000 layoffs as it looks to streamline operations, CEO Satya Nadella has seen his compensation rise a massive 22% to $96.5 million. As is usually the case with tech giant bosses, most of the money comes in the form of stock awards, but Nadella still received around $9.5 million in cash incentives.

Nadella's compensation was up 63% last year to $79.11 million, despite his cash incentives being cut by 50% at his own request. The package included $5.2 million in cash and $71 million in stock awards.

According to Microsoft's proxy statement filed last week, this year has been an even more lucrative one for the Redmond CEO. His stock awards were up to $84 million, while cash incentives rose to $9.5 million. He also received $2.5 million in base salary.

Microsoft wrote that the generous compensation increase is designed to encourage Nadella's continued leadership while driving business growth and shareholder value.

Microsoft's overall revenue increased 15% to $281.7 billion, and net income was up 16% to $101.8 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended on June 30, 2025. The company's stock price, meanwhile, has gone from $354 at the start of April to $523 today – a 47.7% increase.

Microsoft's year-to-date stock price

Since Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer in 2014, Microsoft's revenue has tripled, its net income quadrupled, and diluted earnings per share quintupled. The company's market cap was just over $300 billion when he took the helm. Today, the third-largest company in the world has a market capitalization of $3.8 trillion.

It's all great news for Microsoft and Nadella, but it's unlikely to bring much happiness to the 15,000 or so people the company has laid off this year. Microsoft cut about 6,000 jobs, or roughly 3% of its global workforce, in May 2025. This was followed by another 9,000 cuts in July.

The layoffs were announced as Microsoft made enormous investments in AI, including an $80 billion outlay on AI infrastructure and a massive push toward AI-enabled work. The firm never directly blamed AI for the cuts, which many companies are now doing, but cited shifting business priorities, improving efficiency, structural changes, and new ways of working.

According to PayScale, Microsoft's average salary is about $132,311 per year in the US, or around 0.13% of what Nadella receives.

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After 15,000 layoffs, Microsoft boss Nadella's pay climbs 22% to $96.5 million

 

[axiomatic13]

CEO's are one-trick ponies. This cycle needs to be broken.

 

[winjer]

What a sociopath. Firing thousands just to increase his own pay.

 

[GeoffreyA]

Good stuff. Let's perfect inequality and make Elysium real.

 

[Notmare]

What's the point? CEOs should be the least paid employee. No one would notice their absence. Everyone that actually works on the product would still make progress without them.

 

[VitalyT]

Good stuff. Let's perfect inequality and make Elysium real.

Yes, because when the unemployed and angry people bring torches to light the company, pricks like that will need a place to hide. Or maybe he will kick the bucket before then, and leave it all to his worthless heirs, to high-roll in Monaco. This is life, sadly.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

What a sociopath. Firing thousands just to increase his own pay.

Well, unless those 15,000 employees were only making $6,434 per year, their firing saves a LOT more than he is being paid.

Oh wait, his salary went UP TO $96.5 million. So firing those 15,000 people only netted him $19.49 million. So that's only $1,299.34 per employee. And between "cash incentives" and actual salary, his income is 12 million, not 98.6 million. And he requested his cash incentives be cut by 50%....

So....where's the rest of the money going?

 

[OortCloud]

The corporations in the US are so out of control now and just cutting chunks out of society. There has to be more to a company than making money for shareholders, this has to change.

 

[guillejp]

Net income was up 16% to $101.8 billion for fiscal year 2025... And stock up 47.7%...
That's net income up 17,000M and value up 1.3T, even if aided by the AI bubble... And saves the company about 15B in salaries yearly...

I was ready to bash him, but... If I was chairman, yeah, give him his meager 15M.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Net income was up 16% to $101.8 billion for fiscal year 2025... And stock up 47.7%...
That's net income up 17,000M... And saves the company about 15B in salaries yearly...

I was ready to bash him, but... If I was chairman, yeah, give him his 15M.

He didn't earn that money. It's his job and he is already paid obscenely well for doing exactly this.

Do the employees who wrote Office get paid a chunk of the revenue from sales? The people who wrote the core code should be billionaires if you got paid on that sort of basis.

The system is clearly rigged for executives to get paid way beyond they actual work contributions. Absolutely nobody *earns* $90+m a year. Nobody.

 

[scoffer]

Well, it's so lucky for such a nice chap that you can take it all with you when you die......oh, wait..........

 

[scoffer]

The corporations in the US are so out of control now and just cutting chunks out of society. There has to be more to a company than making money for shareholders, this has to change.

Agreed. Corporate America is totally out of control now. Just utter, unbelievable greed. I don't have an axe to grind -I'm a Brit with many American friends. But it's not gonna be TOO long before China REALLY turns around and teaches the US a serious lesson. Sadly.

 

[pnntmp]

To the surprise of no one, there are more than enough id1otic comments under an article of the same type.

During the Covid hysteria, Microsoft added 90+ K jobs. They over-over-hired, just like pretty much everyone in tech. The 2025 cuts are a small fraction of that - it's a slight course correction towards normal after an over-hiring spree.
Nadella's compensation rose simply because it's in stock options - Nadella dramatically increased Microsoft's value during the years.

Layoffs and Nadella's pay have nothing to do with each other. His pay went down, by the way. It's the stock that went up, to a large extent because of him.

 

[johnsonlam.hk]

Good old record ... fire the Windows Q.C. team and replace with virtual machine test, so Windows 11 got all kinds of trouble on different hardware. I just setup a Windows 11 new PC and some dialog box text just outside the frame and even scroll to bottom cannot see all lines, at least MacOS did not have this kind of problem. All kind of strange behavior, such a I got a game with Unity Engine did not run reporting Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Error! No way to resolve.

 

[3volv3d]

Good stuff. Let's perfect inequality and make Elysium real.

I feel like a lot of movies are there to either see how far people are willing to bend over, or to make you believe stuff hasn't happened, you know how they say don't believe everything you see in movies, while you're plugged into a tube in "the desert", another human battery.

But Elysium isnt a bad theory, the rich hiding on a ship where you can't get to them, because let's face it, it's heading towards a civil war in most countries. And they have people fighting each other, immigrants to blame. Not capitalism and greed, noooo.

Eat the rich.

 

[gabelogan1324]

To the surprise of no one, there are more than enough id1otic comments under an article of the same type.

During the Covid hysteria, Microsoft added 90+ K jobs. They over-over-hired, just like pretty much everyone in tech. The 2025 cuts are a small fraction of that - it's a slight course correction towards normal after an over-hiring spree.
Nadella's compensation rose simply because it's in stock options - Nadella dramatically increased Microsoft's value during the years.

Layoffs and Nadella's pay have nothing to do with each other. His pay went down, by the way. It's the stock that went up, to a large extent because of him.

also its not like those who got laid off didnt get a great severance package either - I highly doubt they got shown the door with nothing to leave with.

 

[gabelogan1324]

To the surprise of no one, there are more than enough id1otic comments under an article of the same type.

During the Covid hysteria, Microsoft added 90+ K jobs. They over-over-hired, just like pretty much everyone in tech. The 2025 cuts are a small fraction of that - it's a slight course correction towards normal after an over-hiring spree.
Nadella's compensation rose simply because it's in stock options - Nadella dramatically increased Microsoft's value during the years.

Layoffs and Nadella's pay have nothing to do with each other. His pay went down, by the way. It's the stock that went up, to a large extent because of him.

correct in regards to the stock options - he even asked for it to be reduced, but clearly, what he is doing overall adds tremendous value to the company and those who have shares in Microsoft ( like everyone who works there and those who got laid off im sure their stock options were vested, so they got a pretty penny too!).

its way too easy to dehumanize people who are at the top like they are dictators of a company when they have way more responsibility then anyone else in the company.

 

[gabelogan1324]

The corporations in the US are so out of control now and just cutting chunks out of society. There has to be more to a company than making money for shareholders, this has to change.

but the shareholders are also people who work in the company as well as those who invest in microsoft through 401k etc - so are you saying all of those who have a slice in microsoft and other companies should not get what they invested?

 

[Lounds]

Wait so M$ was a $300B company in 2014 and is now got a market cap of $3.9T thats madness. QE really has ruined capitalism for ordinary people. QE = Socialism for the rich.

 

[GeoffreyA]

I feel like a lot of movies are there to either see how far people are willing to bend over, or to make you believe stuff hasn't happened, you know how they say don't believe everything you see in movies, while you're plugged into a tube in "the desert", another human battery.

But Elysium isnt a bad theory, the rich hiding on a ship where you can't get to them, because let's face it, it's heading towards a civil war in most countries. And they have people fighting each other, immigrants to blame. Not capitalism and greed, noooo.

Eat the rich.

Science-fiction tends to paint a strikingly accurate picture of where society will go. Morpheus's words, for example, "We marvelled at our intelligence, at the creation of AI," something to that effect, rings true today, and there are countless examples.

Elysium's concept sounds convincing to me, particularly with "tech bros" and the increasing wealth inequality. I believe 1% hold about half the world's wealth.

 

[Skjorn]

Wait so M$ was a $300B company in 2014 and is now got a market cap of $3.9T thats madness. QE really has ruined capitalism for ordinary people. QE = Socialism for the rich.

I imagine most of the income is from Azure but if that's even half as bad as WindowsOS then there is absolutely no way they're worth $3.9T. To have so much money but consistently break your product just doesn't make sense.

 

[captaincranky]

correct in regards to the stock options - he even asked for it to be reduced, but clearly, what he is doing overall adds tremendous value to the company and those who have shares in Microsoft ( like everyone who works there and those who got laid off im sure their stock options were vested, so they got a pretty penny too!).

This is a good theory. The only problem with it is this; where are these people going to go after the severance money runs out?

And while I, "hate to bring up politics", the "real news", not what some people might want to believe, goes like this. During the first month or so of the tRump administration, job numbers were listed as "299,xxx" jobs were created. And of course, Don the con took a bow.

However, during the same month, 286,xxx, was reported as, "new claims for unemployment benefits filed",

Now, if any of you still remember basic math. 299.000 minus 284,000 equals 15,000.. !! The actual difference in the jobs available.during that month

Last month or so, the jobs created numbers were so bad (<80,000), Donny boy fired the statistician from the department of labor. This past months jobs numbers were so bad, the administration is, or was, quite reticent to have them published.

In other words, if you still have your job, "atta boy, good for you". But spare us the philosophizing about the conditions of other people's lives.

 

[umeng2002]

Stock is fake money. He isn't paid 96 million. Microsoft doesn't have a trillion dollars in a bank account. If they sold everything they had, it wouldn't be a trillion dollars (or whatever their market cap is). Odd things companies do are done to increase stock prices. Wealthy people are wealthy, not "cashy." Only poor people use money. Rich people trade in stock and live off debt.

 

[ZedRM]

Oh what a surprise, another greedy corp CEO profiting from the downtrodden. What a pathetic...

 

[captaincranky]

Oh what a surprise, another greedy corp CEO profiting from the downtrodden. What a pathetic...

The average news cycle is about three days, give or take, I've repeatedly designated Satya Nadella as, "a piece of sh!t". The difference being, while my short term memory isn't as acute as it once was, my long term can be quite vivid,
I remember Steve Baumer being ousted for the debacle that was Windows 8, with Bill Gates no longer CEO.
I remember the strong arm tactics Nadella came in with, forcing the adoption of Windows 10, with no dirty trick withheld. I can still hear the chorus chanting, "but it's free". (I'm still wondering about the hidden costs)

The reality is, now Nadella is riding a new Trojan horse into battle, Windows 11.

Nowadays, this monster makes Bill Gates look like the Boy Scout that helps little ladies cross the street.

BTW, "pathetic", isn't the appropriate term for many, many, CEO's actions and rewards. It's "sociopathic". Although, "tragic for their victims", could possibly describe the results of those actions.