If your name is on Microsoft's May 7 list, you have 30 days to make a decision that will shape your next decade. The package is the smallest part of that decision. The runway it creates — or doesn't — is the rest.

Introduction

On April 23, 2026, Microsoft announced its first-ever voluntary retirement program in the company's 51-year history. The program is open to U.S. employees at Level 67 (senior director equivalent) and below whose age plus years of continuous service equals 70 or more — the so-called Rule of 70. Approximately 8,750 employees are eligible. Notification arrives May 7. The decision window is 30 days.

If you are reading this paper, you are likely one of those employees, or you know one well enough to be helping them think it through. The conversations we've had since the announcement have all started in roughly the same place: "Should I take it?" That is the wrong first question, and it is one of the reasons employees in voluntary buyout situations frequently make decisions they later regret.

The right first question is different. What are you actually being offered, and what does each path — taking the package, declining it, or some structured combination — make possible for the next five years? The package itself is the smallest variable. The largest is what continued vesting under Microsoft's separate retirement provisions does for your runway. The decisions you make in the 30 days after notification will shape your tax outcomes, your investment trajectory, and your post-employment income for a decade or more.

This paper walks through the mechanics of the program, the critical distinction between the Rule of 70 and the 55/15 retirement rule, what the runway buys you strategically, and how to actually structure the 30-day window. Final package terms were disclosed to eligible employees on May 7, 2026; this paper reflects what has been reported as of that date. The framework underneath the numbers does not change as numbers shift.

Q: What is Microsoft's Rule of 70 program, and who qualifies?

The Rule of 70 is a one-time voluntary retirement program offered to U.S. employees at Level 67 and below — senior director equivalent and beneath — whose age plus continuous years of service at Microsoft equals 70 or more. Employees on sales incentive plans are excluded. Eligible employees were notified on May 7, 2026, with a 30-day decision window from notification.

The math is simple. A 50-year-old with 20 years of service qualifies. So does a 55-year-old with 15. Or a 60-year-old with 10. The formula draws a clean line through the workforce: roughly 8,750 employees out of Microsoft's 125,000 U.S. workforce — about 7%.

The program is the first of its kind in Microsoft's 51-year history. Voluntary buyouts have been common in older industries — telecom, manufacturing, financial services — for decades, but Big Tech has generally favored involuntary layoffs, performance-based reductions, and stricter return-to-office policies. Microsoft's adoption of a tenure-and-age formula represents a meaningful shift, and most observers expect other large tech employers to follow within the next year. The structural pressure that drove this decision — massive AI infrastructure capital expenditure ($145B at Microsoft alone in fiscal 2026) requiring offsetting cost reductions — is not unique to Microsoft.

For employees, the practical implication is that this is a deliberately structured offer aimed at a specific segment: long-tenured workers in their fifties and sixties who built the pre-AI Microsoft. The company is offering a path out that preserves benefits and avoids the headlines and morale damage of a forced layoff. For the right employee, that path may be genuinely attractive. For others, it would be a costly mistake. The decision is yours, and it is rarely as simple as it first appears.

Q: What does the package likely include?

Final terms were disclosed to eligible employees on May 7, 2026. As Microsoft has not made the program documents public, the specifics below reflect what has been reported by the trade press and confirmed by employee accounts of the May 7 internal communications. Individual notifications may include details specific to particular employees; final implementation may differ from publicly reported summaries. The strategic framework that follows does not depend on the precise dollar amounts.

Severance payment

The cash component is tiered by level. Employees at Level 64 receive one week of base pay for every six months of regular service. Employees at Levels 65 through 67 receive two weeks of base pay for every six months of service. Both tiers are capped at 39 weeks. For a Level 65+ employee with 12 or more years of service, the formula reaches the cap at 24 weeks of base pay; below 12 years, the cash scales linearly. Layered on top of the formula severance, employees receive approximately two months on payroll (consistent with prior Microsoft severance practice and WARN Act notice convention) plus one month of additional base pay. For a long-tenured Level 65+ employee, the total cash component lands in the range of seven to nine months of base salary; for a Level 64 employee with similar tenure, the total is roughly four to five months. The severance is taxable in the year received, and — like RSU vesting — typically uses flat supplemental withholding rates (22% federal up to certain thresholds, 37% above) that may be materially below the recipient's actual marginal tax rate.

Pro-rated annual cash award

Microsoft's standard severance plan provides a pro-rated portion of the annual target cash bonus for the fiscal year in which separation occurs. For an employee with significant target bonus, this can be a meaningful additional payment.

Vesting of stock awards

Stock vesting acceleration is tiered by tenure, and this is one of the most important details in the package for long-tenured employees. The standard provision accelerates vesting on stock that would otherwise vest in the six months following separation. For employees with 24 or more years of continuous service, this extends to twelve months of accelerated vesting. The 24-year tenure cliff is consequential: an employee at 23.5 years of service who separates in May 2026 receives six months of acceleration, while the same employee crossing 24 years before separation receives twelve. For an employee close to the threshold, the difference can run into six figures depending on grant size, and it is worth modeling whether timing of separation can capture it.

This standard severance acceleration interacts with the 55/15 retirement vesting provision (discussed in the next question), and the two should not be confused. The severance acceleration applies to all eligible Rule of 70 participants regardless of whether they qualify under 55/15. The 55/15 provision, when it applies, generally provides for substantially longer continued vesting on grants older than one year. For an employee who qualifies under both, the 55/15 rule is the dominant provision; the severance acceleration matters most for participants who do not qualify under 55/15.

Extended healthcare coverage

The package includes six months of healthcare continuation. For a 55-year-old contemplating early retirement, this is a partial bridge — the gap to Medicare at age 65 will require additional coverage from COBRA, the ACA marketplace, a spouse's plan, or another source. Healthcare planning is one of the most under-modeled components of an early-retirement decision, and the six-month bridge does not change that. Six months of continuation is meaningful in the immediate term but represents only the first chapter of a much longer healthcare planning question for any participant under 65.

Career transition services

Microsoft has historically offered some form of outplacement or transition support. Whether this is meaningful depends on the employee's situation; for senior individual contributors and managers, the value of these services is typically modest.

Note: The terms above reflect what has been disclosed and reported as of May 7, 2026. Individual notification packets may include details specific to particular employees, and a definitive read on any individual's offer should come from the actual May 7 communication received from Microsoft, not from any summary published elsewhere — including this paper.

Q: The Rule of 70 and the 55/15 rule are two different things. Which one matters more for your decision?

This is the most important distinction in the entire decision, and it is the one most employees have not had cleanly explained to them. The Rule of 70 determines whether you are eligible for the buyout. The 55/15 rule determines what happens to your unvested stock if you leave. They are independent, and they produce different outcomes.

Microsoft's 2017 Stock Plan, filed publicly with the SEC, provides that an employee who terminates employment after attaining the earlier of (a) age 65, or (b) age 55 with 15 years of continuous service is treated as continuing employment through the original vesting dates of any stock award held for at least one year prior to termination. In practice, this means: if you qualify under the 55/15 rule (or are 65+), every RSU grant you have held for at least one year continues to vest on its original schedule after you leave the company. Grants less than one year old are forfeited.

Some employees qualify for both the Rule of 70 (the buyout) and the 55/15 rule (continued vesting). Some qualify only for the Rule of 70. The difference is consequential.

Profile A is the trap. A 50-year-old with 20 years qualifies for the buyout but does not yet qualify for continued vesting. Taking the package means forfeiting all unvested grants beyond the 12 months covered by Microsoft's standard severance acceleration. For an employee with 4–5 years of grants in flight at typical senior IC compensation levels, that forfeiture can substantially exceed the value of the severance package itself. Profile A should think very carefully before accepting.

Profile B is the structurally cleanest case. A 55-year-old with 15 years qualifies for both the buyout package and continued vesting on grants older than one year. The Rule of 70 provides the cash bridge; the 55/15 rule provides the multi-year runway. These two provisions, properly understood together, are what make this decision economically rational for a long-tenured employee.

Profile C is a middle ground — the buyout terms apply, but unvested stock outside the standard severance acceleration is forfeited. Whether the package compensates for that forfeiture depends on the size and number of grants in flight.

Profile D, the age-65 path, qualifies via the alternate trigger of the 55/15 rule. The continued-vesting analysis is the same as Profile B.

Before doing anything else, every eligible employee should pull their option agreement and stock plan summary, identify which RSU grants are over one year old (and therefore eligible for continued vesting under the 55/15 rule, if they qualify), and compute the total value of those grants. That number is the foundation of every other decision.

Q: When does the grant cycle work in your favor — and when does it work against you?

Microsoft's annual stock award cycle follows a predictable rhythm. Performance reviews occur in August, and new annual stock awards are typically granted at the same time. Annual stock awards vest quarterly over five years at 5% per quarter (20% per year). On-hire grants vest 25% annually over four years. Both vest on the standard quarterly cadence — February, May, August, and November.

For a long-tenured employee, this means there are typically four to five active grants in flight at any moment. A principal engineer with 25 years of service and consistent annual refreshers has been receiving stock awards for two-plus decades; the four most recent annual grants are still vesting at any given time. The cumulative unvested value across those grants can rival or exceed the value of the severance package itself.

The grant cycle creates a timing question that every eligible employee needs to consider. The 55/15 rule preserves continued vesting only on grants that are at least one year old at the date of separation. A grant issued in August 2025 must be held until at least August 2026 to be eligible for continued vesting. An employee who departs in May 2026 — within the original 30-day decision window from May 7 notification — would forfeit their August 2025 grant entirely if they cannot delay separation until August 2026 or later.

There is also the question of the August 2026 grant itself. An employee who is still on payroll when the next round of annual grants is issued (assuming they continue to be issued on the standard August cycle) receives that grant. If they are no longer at the company on grant date, they do not. For an employee considering accepting the buyout, the grant date can represent a meaningful additional value if separation can be timed around it — though the program's structure may not permit that flexibility.

A second timing question runs alongside the grant cycle: the 24-year tenure cliff in the standard severance vesting acceleration discussed earlier. An employee at 23.5 years of continuous service who separates in May 2026 receives six months of accelerated vesting on otherwise unvested stock. The same employee crossing 24 years before separation receives twelve months. For an employee who is also evaluating the August grant cycle question, both timing considerations point in the same direction — and crossing both thresholds before separation can produce a materially different total package.

Consider a hypothetical principal engineer at L67 with 25 years at Microsoft, $475,000 base salary, and roughly $850,000 in annual RSU grants. As of May 2026, they hold the following grants in various stages of vesting:

If this employee separates in May 2026, approximately $963,000 of unvested stock continues to vest under the 55/15 rule on its original quarterly schedule — spread over the next four years. The $680,000 from the August 2025 grant is forfeited. If the same employee can delay separation to August 2026 (after the August 2025 grant crosses the one-year threshold and assuming the company permits this within the program's structure), nearly the full unvested balance plus any newly issued August 2026 grant becomes eligible for continued vesting. The difference can run into seven figures.

All numbers above are illustrative. Individual grant sizes, vesting schedules, and program-specific timing flexibility vary. The point is not the specific dollar amounts but the structural insight: when you separate matters as much as whether you separate.

Q: What are most analyses of the buyout decision missing?

In the two weeks since Microsoft's announcement, a number of advisors and trade publications have written about the program. Most of those analyses focus on the package: the severance multiple, the healthcare extension, the accelerated vesting. Some go a level deeper and discuss the 55/15 retirement vesting provision. Very few address the actual question that determines outcomes.

The package is not the variable that drives the decision. The runway is.

Continued vesting under the 55/15 rule, for employees who qualify, is not simply additional compensation that arrives over time. It is a strategic time horizon. For three to five years after separation, you have a known stream of unvested stock vesting on a predictable schedule. That horizon makes possible a set of strategies that simply cannot be executed in a single year of departure.

Multi-year tax-efficient diversification is the most obvious example. An employee who departs without continued vesting and wants to reduce concentration in Microsoft stock has a single decision year. They sell some, they pay short-term or long-term capital gains rates depending on holding period, and they redeploy the proceeds. An employee with three to five years of continued vesting can spread sales across multiple tax years, smoothing the income picture and meaningfully reducing total tax drag over the diversification period. On a $2 million concentrated position being unwound, the difference between a one-year exit and a multi-year exit can run into six figures of preserved after-tax value.

Direct indexing strategies, often paired with concentrated stock to systematically harvest losses against future gains, generally need 18 to 36 months to produce material tax benefit. A one-year departure offers no time for this to work. A multi-year runway does.

Option overlay strategies — covered calls written against concentrated stock, or protective collars designed to limit downside while preserving some upside — work most cleanly when the underlying position has a defined holding horizon. Continued vesting provides exactly that.

Roth conversion ladders depend on a known income picture across multiple years. The ideal Roth conversion year is one in which W-2 income disappears, leaving the conversion to occur in lower marginal tax brackets. With continued RSU vesting, the income picture is different in each post-departure year, but it is knowable in advance. A multi-year conversion strategy sized to the actual income trajectory can move significant assets to Roth at materially better tax rates than would be possible during peak earnings years.

Deferred annuity strategies, used to maximize lifetime guaranteed income, generally benefit from deferral periods of three to seven years. The continued-vesting runway dovetails neatly with this kind of structure: the vesting income provides cash flow during the deferral period while the annuity benefit base grows.

Charitable bunching across multiple years — clustering several years of charitable gifts into a single high-income year via a donor-advised fund — depends on visibility into which years will be the highest-income years. Continued vesting makes that visibility possible.

None of these strategies require continued vesting to work in principle. All of them work substantially better when there is a multi-year runway to deploy them. The package gets you to the door. The runway is what you walk through.

Q: How is the severance taxed, and how can timing affect that?

Severance pay is taxed as ordinary income in the year it is received. For an employee separating mid-2026 with a six-to-twelve month base-salary severance plus pro-rated bonus, the severance payment plus the year-to-date W-2 income will likely produce one of the highest income years of that employee's career. Adding any RSU vesting that occurs before the separation date compounds the effect.

Like RSU vesting, severance payments typically use flat supplemental withholding — 22% federal up to certain thresholds, 37% above. For a senior employee whose actual marginal federal rate is 35% to 37%, the 22% withholding rate creates an underwithholding gap that materially mirrors the gap discussed in our earlier paper on RSU taxation. On a $500,000 severance payment, the gap between 22% withholding and 37% actual rate is $75,000 — a tax bill that becomes due at filing time.

Timing of severance payment within the calendar year matters. A payment made in December 2026 versus January 2027 does not change the total tax owed but does change which year's income picture absorbs the payment. For an employee who anticipates 2027 will be a much lower-income year — for example, a planned retirement with no immediate re-employment — pushing the severance payment into 2027 can produce meaningfully better tax outcomes. Whether this is achievable depends on the program's payment structure and any negotiation flexibility, neither of which is guaranteed.

The pro-rated bonus payment is treated similarly to severance for tax purposes. The accelerated vesting of stock follows the same flat-supplemental-withholding treatment as ordinary RSU vesting: the spread between strike (zero, for RSUs) and fair market value at vesting is W-2 income; the post-vest holding period determines whether subsequent gains are taxed at long-term or short-term capital gains rates.

For employees expecting a high 2026 tax year, two planning moves are worth considering before separation. First, increase W-2 withholding for the remainder of the year to close the underwithholding gap; a W-2 dollar withheld late in the year counts as if it were withheld evenly across all four quarters, which can avoid underpayment penalties. Second, model whether quarterly estimated payments to the IRS are worth setting up; for a one-time event like a buyout, simply adjusting withholding is usually cleaner.

None of this is tax advice. The mechanics described are the mechanics. The specific moves that make sense depend on the rest of the picture, and they are conversations to have with a qualified CPA before separation, not after.

Q: What happens to my deferred compensation if I take the package?

Microsoft's Deferred Compensation Plan is available to employees at Level 67 and above. Eligible employees can defer up to 100% of their annual cash bonus and up to 75% of their base salary into a non-qualified deferred compensation account. Election windows for deferral occur in May (for the September bonus) and November (for the following year's base salary deferral).

The DCP is structured as an unfunded promise from Microsoft — the funds remain a general asset of the company until distribution, and the participant is an unsecured creditor. The election made at deferral specifies the distribution schedule: a lump sum at separation, or installments over a period of years. Once made, that election is generally irrevocable, and termination of employment triggers the payout schedule whether the participant wants it to or not.

This is the trap that catches a meaningful share of participants. Imagine a senior director who, ten years ago, elected to receive their DCP balance as a 10-year installment payout starting at termination, expecting that termination would coincide with full retirement and a low income year. Now, in 2026, they accept the Rule of 70 buyout. Their DCP balance — say, $1.2 million — begins distributing at $120,000 per year for the next decade. If they continue to receive RSU vesting income under the 55/15 rule for the next four years (perhaps $200,000–$400,000 per year), and they have severance income in 2026, and they intend to keep working in some capacity, the DCP installments are landing on top of an income picture that is not particularly low. The deferral that was supposed to land in lower brackets is landing in similar or higher brackets than the original deferral year.

The lump sum option creates the opposite problem: the entire DCP balance becomes taxable in a single year, often in the same year as the severance payment, creating an income spike that may push a meaningful portion of the balance into the highest marginal bracket.

There is no universal answer. The right approach depends on the existing election (which generally cannot be changed at this point), the size of the DCP balance, the projected income picture across the next five-to-ten years including continued RSU vesting, and the available capacity for tax-mitigating moves like Roth conversions in any low-income years. The point is that the DCP is not a separate decision from the buyout decision. They are the same decision, and they need to be modeled together.

Q: What about my vested employer stock — when can I sell, and should I?

For employees who have accumulated significant Microsoft stock through years of vested RSUs, ESPP purchases, and 401(k) employer match, the post-departure environment changes the practical landscape. Active employees are subject to insider trading restrictions, blackout windows, and 10b5-1 plan requirements that constrain when sales can occur. After separation, those constraints generally lift, and the employee can sell on their own schedule subject only to standard market trading rules and any post-employment restrictions specific to their grant agreements.

For a long-tenured Microsoft employee, the cumulative concentration in MSFT stock can be substantial. Microsoft stock has compounded meaningfully over the past two decades — an employee whose grants vested across years of strong appreciation, who never sold or sold sparingly, can hold 30%, 50%, or 70% of their investable net worth in a single position. Whether that level of concentration was a good investment in retrospect is a separate question from whether it should remain at that level going forward.

The most common mistake we see post-departure is the same mistake we see during employment: concentration risk becomes invisible to the holder because the position has gone up. The fact that MSFT has appreciated does not change the diversification calculus; it intensifies it. A position that grew from $1M to $3M now represents three times the dollar exposure to a single name, regardless of how proud the holder is of having held it. The cleanest test, which we have used in our prior writing on concentrated stock: if the entire position were converted to cash overnight, would you go out tomorrow and buy back that exact same concentrated bet in a single public company? For nearly everyone, the honest answer is no.

With continued vesting under the 55/15 rule layered on top of the existing concentrated position, the diversification picture becomes more complex, not less. Selling vested stock today reduces concentration; continued vesting on the original schedule rebuilds it. The strategic answer for most long-tenured employees is some form of multi-year diversification plan that sells systematically through the continued-vesting period, with sale volumes sized to match the new vesting and gradually reduce overall concentration. Direct indexing, exchange funds, and option overlay strategies all have potential roles in this picture; the right structure depends on the size of the position, the cost basis distribution, and the broader portfolio context.

Q: What does the healthcare bridge actually look like for an employee in their fifties?

Medicare eligibility begins at age 65. For a 55-year-old contemplating early retirement, that is a 10-year bridge. For a 60-year-old, it is five years. The healthcare cost during that bridge is one of the most under-modeled components of an early-retirement decision, and it is frequently larger than the headline number employees expect.

Microsoft's prior layoff packages have typically included up to six months of healthcare continuation. Beyond that, the options are: COBRA (which extends Microsoft's group coverage at the employee's full cost plus a 2% administrative fee, generally for 18 months), the ACA marketplace (subsidized based on household income — and meaningfully cheaper for employees in low-income years post-departure), a spouse's employer-provided coverage, or private direct-purchase plans.

For a single individual or a couple in their late fifties, ACA marketplace coverage in 2026 typically runs $1,500 to $2,500 per month per person at full cost, falling significantly with subsidies in lower-income years. For a family of four, full-cost coverage commonly exceeds $30,000 per year. Over a 10-year bridge, total healthcare cost can reach $300,000 to $500,000 or more, depending on family size, plan choice, and any out-of-pocket medical events.

The interaction between healthcare cost and ACA subsidy eligibility creates an opportunity that connects to several of the other planning topics in this paper. ACA premium subsidies phase out at higher Modified Adjusted Gross Income levels. An employee with continued RSU vesting may have MAGI high enough to disqualify them from significant subsidies in early post-departure years. As continued vesting tapers, MAGI may drop into subsidy-eligible territory, materially reducing healthcare cost in later bridge years. Roth conversions in any given year affect MAGI for that year. The full picture — vesting income, severance, deferred comp distributions, intentional Roth conversions, and ACA subsidy eligibility — needs to be modeled together to find the lowest-cost path.

Spousal coverage, when available, is usually the cleanest answer. If your spouse is employed and has access to a group plan that covers dependents at reasonable cost, that is generally the lowest-friction path through the bridge. The trade-off may be that the spouse needs to remain employed longer than they otherwise would have planned to maintain coverage.

Q: Is there a Roth conversion opportunity hidden in this decision?

Quite possibly, and it is one of the highest-leverage planning moves available to a departing employee. The mechanics are straightforward in concept and often missed in practice.

A Roth conversion takes pre-tax dollars from a traditional IRA or 401(k), pays ordinary income tax on the converted amount in the year of conversion, and moves the funds to a Roth account where future growth and qualified withdrawals are tax-free. The strategic question is always: in what year is the marginal tax rate on the conversion lowest? For most employees during peak earnings years, the answer is "not now." Marginal rates of 32% to 37% federal — plus state, where applicable — make conversions during peak years expensive. But after departure, particularly in years when W-2 income disappears, marginal rates can drop substantially.

For an employee separating in 2026 with continued RSU vesting under the 55/15 rule, the income picture for 2027 onward depends heavily on the size of the continued-vesting stream. Using the principal engineer hypothetical from earlier in this paper, continued vesting of approximately $963,000 spread over four years averages around $240,000 per year — which still produces a meaningful tax bracket but is materially below peak earnings. By year four post-departure, vesting is exhausted, and the income picture (assuming no re-employment) drops dramatically. Years five and beyond, before Social Security and RMDs, can be the lowest-marginal-tax years of an employee's adult life. These are the prime Roth conversion years.

A Roth conversion ladder — converting fixed amounts each year, sized to fill specific tax brackets without overflowing into higher ones — across the 5-to-10-year window between final RSU vesting and the start of Social Security and RMDs can move hundreds of thousands of dollars to Roth at federal marginal rates of 12%, 22%, or 24%, compared to the 35%–37% rates that applied during employment. On a $1M conversion executed across years at 24% federal versus the same amount converted in a peak earnings year at 37%, the federal tax savings is approximately $130,000.

Whether this opportunity exists in a particular case depends on the entire income picture: continued RSU vesting, deferred comp distributions, Social Security claiming strategy, any pension or annuity income, capital gains realized on diversification sales, and ACA subsidy considerations as discussed in the prior question. The conversion strategy is not a separate decision from the rest of the post-employment plan; it is one of the variables that gets optimized within the larger model.

Q: How should you actually structure the 30-day decision window?

The 30 days move quickly, and the work needed to make a defensible decision does not compress well. We recommend treating the window as four phases, each taking roughly a week.

Week 1: Gather the inputs.

Pull your full RSU vesting schedule, including the date and original size of every grant currently in flight. Identify which grants are over one year old (eligible for continued vesting under the 55/15 rule, if you qualify) and which are not. Compile your DCP balance and current distribution schedule. Confirm your healthcare situation and what your post-employment options actually cost. Pull your most recent tax return and any year-to-date 2026 income figures. Identify your 401(k) and IRA balances and the split between pre-tax, Roth, and after-tax. None of this is hard work, but it is essential, and most employees discover during this phase that they do not actually have a clean picture of their own equity compensation.

Week 2: Model the math.

With the inputs gathered, run two scenarios: the take-the-package scenario and the stay scenario. For each, project income and tax outcomes for the next five years. The take-the-package scenario should include the severance, continued RSU vesting if applicable, DCP distribution schedule, planned Roth conversions, and healthcare cost. The stay scenario should reflect projected continuation of full compensation, accounting for the possibility that future workforce reductions may not be voluntary. Both scenarios should account for capital gains on planned diversification sales. This is the phase where most employees benefit from working with a financial advisor and a CPA, because the modeling involves enough variables that doing it on a spreadsheet alone usually produces blind spots.

Week 3: Make the decision.

With both scenarios modeled, the question becomes: which of these two pictures of the next five years is the one I want to live? It is rarely a numbers-only answer. Job satisfaction, the role AI is reshaping in your specific group, the prospect of future involuntary reductions, family considerations, and personal goals all matter. The numbers tell you what is achievable on each path. The decision is what you actually want.

Week 4: Buffer.

Even with the decision made, executing it cleanly requires HR coordination, paperwork, possible negotiation around separation date or specific terms, and time to make sure nothing has been missed. Treating the final week as buffer rather than as decision time is what separates a clean exit from a stressful one.

Securities and Investment Advisory Services are offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. Osaic Wealth is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Osaic Wealth. Osaic Wealth does not offer tax or legal advice. This content reflects publicly reported information as of May 7, 2026, and is provided for informational purposes only. Microsoft has not made the official program documents public; individual offer terms may differ from the summaries described here. Employees should rely on their actual notification from Microsoft and consult a qualified financial advisor and CPA before making any separation decision. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.