50% match on the 401(k) is nothing special; a federal government employee who puts in 5% gets a 5% match (1% agency automatic, 3% 1:1 match, 1% 1:2 match). The great part is that there's no cap beyond that imposed by the IRS.
Microsoft contributes 50% of one’s contributions to their 401k, whereas federal government contributes up to 4% of one’s pay to contributions.
So if you contribute $19,000 at MSFT, you get an additional $9,500. If you contribute $19,000 at federal, and you earn $150k, you get an additional $6k, subject to 3 years vesting requirement.
Matching 3% to 5% of pay is common. Matching 50% of all contributions is not, and is far above the median, therefore I would consider a 50% match on contributions to be special. To get a similar 401k match in federal, you’d have to make almost $200k, whereas Microsoft is not restricting it by income.
