This question resolves as:

• Positive if I leave the company and make more in total compensation (stock, base, bonus) than I would have by staying.

• Negative if I leave the company and make less than I would have by staying.

• Ambiguous if I have not left the company by December 31st, 2023.

What counts as leaving the company:

• Being impacted by a layoff, even if my termination date is not in 2023.

• Quitting my job at any point, even if I "boomerang" back later.

• Being fired for cause.

• Joining a company owned by Microsoft (LinkedIn, Github)

• Death or permanent disability (in which case insurance pays out).

What does not count as leaving the company:

• Internal transfers to another team or business group.

• Leaves of absense, e.g short term disability leave, sabbaticals.

• International transfers to work for Microsoft in another location.

• Interviewing around and then accepting a counter-offer to stay.

• Being removed from an initial layoff list thanks to exec intervention.

Assumptions defining how much I would make by staying:

• Only consider employment income reported on Form T4 (Statement of Remuneration paid).

• On-hire RSU vesting continues as scheduled.

• The number of promotions I get in 2023 is strictly less than 2.

• Bonus% is somewhere between target and what I got last cycle.

• Merit% adjustment does not take inflation rates into account.

• I do not earn any out-of-band discretionary special stock awards.

Relevant links:

• Layoffs.fyi lists 104132 layoffs in 2023, compared to 160097 in all of 2022.

• Google Canada starts layoffs as parent company cuts 12,000 workers globally | , I take this as evidence that Microsoft's announced layoffs may affect Canadian employees

I've stayed at MS for so long since I firmly believed it was the best way for me to help society, and I want to do AI safety/interpretability/alignment full time now since I think that's higher expected value overall. If I get rejected from every organization doing cool things in AI alignment, then I'll find an awesome cofounder, incorporate a new entity, and try to get that funded.

LinkedIn for those who care: 22 y.o, SWE II, 3 years of tenure at MS (2 years FTE, 1 year as a contractor), 5 internships, multiple awards in international competitions, IEEE conference speaker, completed undergrad early, got into Stanford, active on /r/mlscaling, met Geoff Hinton once, on a closed work permit but will get a Canada PR card soon, no publications yet but co-authoring a paper to submit to NeurIPS23, good network of contacts.