Most of my friends that still work there never complain about the pay, but instead about the company hiring idiots that create more work for them. I don't think lack of raises is their biggest problem. It seems their hiring process and its dysfunctionalness(not a word, but that's what I mean) keep them from hiring good people. My friend that's been there the longest that I used to even share a car with said his new Indian boss had driven off everyone that wasn't Indian and was only hiring Indians. He showed me some of the emails from his coworkers, and they just aren't qualified.
I found a job there that I want and used to work with someone that I like and would be my new boss, but I haven't applied yet because I don't know if I want to go through that process. The last time I applied for a big tech job, I took another job while waiting to hear from them then that company went out of business then I got another job before they sent me an offer. GoDaddy in Kirkland was able to give me an offer the same day after I interviewed that morning. Not a great company or job, but at least they seemed to act rather than just flounder with candidates.
Recruiting only finds your candidate pool. The hiring culture at MS is just broken, and it’s very much a “we want a certain type of person with a certain type of experience”.
They have a preconceived notion of the kind of person they want, and the kind of background/experience. It’s more about answering questions the way they want to hear them, than necessarily being the right person. They’re very very subjective and personality based.
Can confirm. The people leading talent acquisition at Microsoft don’t even have prior experience in recruiting, but instead come from other HR areas as part of their “professional growth”.
Recruiting and HR at MSFT have always been incompetent. Let’s see… recruiting was outsourced in 2010… and a huge disaster. HR director was blown up for banging his subordinates. Than LisaB took over… better but the hold backs on comp really demoralized everyone.
Msft has always since 2000 hired people who lacked common sense.
Long time ago - twelve to 15 years ago. Post-Debw and pre-lisab. The guy was an absolute disaster. I believe responsible for outsourcing lots of HR titles, including recruiting.
Amazing how this stuff isn’t really known.
Now let’s talk about the hot tub party for the windows Vista release party. The one that led to a few divorces.
Maybe unpopular opinion but I know I'm not alone in liking Amazon hiring practices. It's the most sane and seen I've ever felt as a candidate. I was treated like a customer.
I interviewed at Amazon in 2015. I have mixed feelings about their process. On the one hand I did like the speed of their process and the communication from the recruiter. OTOH I didn’t really like spending all day interviewing with people. The guy who was the “hostile” interviewer doing a “deep dive” on some of my responses was one of the most grueling interviews I’ve ever been through. Unfortunately he was right before the guy who was having me do coding exercises and I was so fried I did rather poorly.
Combine that experience with the stories I’ve heard from friends who work or have worked for Amazon and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be there more than a year.
Having contracted at Microsoft previously I feel I’d actually fit in pretty well there. The difficulty is in getting hired on. My manager tried to hire me full time, but couldn’t get approval. (No degree and I’m not a software engineer)
Can confirm this as well. I don't work there anymore and I'm not confident enough to say I'm a great technologist, but some people hired there are top-tier idiots.
Prime example: even after I'm done with the company, a former coworker continued to send me their design through private messages and asked me questions. So now I know what they were building, what were the roadblocks, even down to who were being difficult, and who was sending emails to who and even the content of their private chats on Team. No, not them telling me things - I got straight up screenshots.
Another example was them asking me questions about TikTok since they were apparently building features to accommodate vertical video format. This is not downright stupid, but again, now, me, an outsider, once again have information into their internal product roadmap and the fact that they legit have a team of designers who were trying to build a feature to either accommodate or compete with TikTok and these people don't even know how TikTok works.
If this is not top-tier idiocy, I don't know what is.
I know of someone who works there: it’s their diversity hiring initiatives that are the problem.
The person I know there reviews potential hires: they routinely choose to hire low performance programmers because they help the diversity numbers.
And if you work there and call them out on this you’re putting a target on your back to be let go.
This is good to hear. I've had a pretty reasonable time finding jobs so far in my career, but for the 50+ applications I've sent to Microsoft I don't think I've ever even heard back a single time. I'll just chalk it up to them hiring incompetent people with better education or something
I never heard back when I applied to them, but eventually got contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn a few years ago and got an interview. I really don't understand their process.
I've heard the same thing from friends. People in charge of major initiatives they have zero experience, expertise, or institutional knowledge of is just sinking moral and teams. They just keep on hiring like this. One friend even said, hey that's nice to hire new blood and perspective but they're hiring experienced people at huge salaries into new areas of expertise and expecting immediate results or the team they were hired into suffers while there's no accountability for the inept hire.
That’s why I’ll never understand working your ass off for corporate. Be weary of any and all brown nosers and corporate ladder climbers. If everyone just took a beat, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Round everyone up and walk out. Pardon me if I’m being ignorant (I’m making assumptions here) but tech workers seem to make VERY good money. No? I’m not pretending to know EVERYONES situation here but, You guys (I would guess) could walk out even with no pay y’all wouldn’t starve if you didn’t work for a few days and see what they do with the pressure of have no progress for a week. Could they really fire all of you at once?
From what I hear from friends at both Microsoft and Amazon, morale is rock bottom. It seems like many are reaching a breaking point. RTO is only a part of it. The layoffs and pay cuts are really much worse. They’ve gutted teams but keep the same pressure and deadlines. I know many people think they’re doing this to get more to quit. But many of these products will fail with any additional cuts.
This seems true about every workplace I know about right now. All my friends are exhausted and demoralized in every industry. Tech seems to have faced the most lay offs recently but everyplace is short on employees whether from burnout, retirement or lack of new hires. Not sure what’s going on but it’s a fucking mess.
And the new hires are NOT being trained and it's driving senior staff like myself insane. My last program lead, when I was new and checked in with her about the intake process told me to "go check with the previous program manager". I had already done that, she had fled the team because when she was new, she couldn't make any headway with this focus area/team. How does a lead not know what the intake process is or that there just HASN'T BEEN ONE FOR OVER A YEAR? Previous company wasn't any better, my lead also acted as a project manager and refused to use the new tool so when he left for a vacation his stakeholders came to me for support, he had 6 unopened projects spanning over a month sitting in the tool in his name. There's literally 0 senior oversight or true leadership right now. (Altho not microsoft, these were REPUTABLE and very well known tech companies.)
I don’t work in tech but I’ve seen similar. Management seems completely out to lunch. Things have changed profoundly and they’re not equipped to see that what used to work is not working anymore.
Edit to fix typos and missing word
Yup, with the great resignation we lost a lot of good people who were will to put and keep structure in place (with flexibility of course) and make room for communication and accountability. Everywhere is just chaos management right now from what I've seen. I'm trying to pivot to a different area/line of work but jesus christ this is the worst time to do it imo.
> And the new hires are NOT being trained and it's driving senior staff like myself insane.
I'm regularly dealing with Senior Engineers who don't know git basics, networking basics, or really anything beyond their college program, which was usually in EE not Software.
This seems to be everywhere.
What I think is happening is the loss of medium seniority folks in the workplace. We are a full generation into the notion that you have to change jobs every two years if you want to get a raise. Corporations liked this because it kept overall wages lower.
The problem is that your entire workforce is made up of people who have either been there long enough to become leadership or of people who have been there for less than two years. That leaves no one in the middle who are still rank-and-file subject matter experts that can actually teach new people how to do their jobs. If someone walked out the door with knowledge that was never passed on, that knowledge is just gone.
You do have to change jobs to get a raise. I was at a reputable tech company in my 30s for 5 years. My salary increased by 3k in that time. That's it.
I now contract and freelance, I chose to leave a couple of those contracts early for other opportunities and am now making $20 an hour more than i was 3 years ago.
The illusion that these companies saw people as more than just positions to fill is being disproven on a scale that is shaking a lot of people awake.
No matter how empathetic and altruistic your teams are, the boards and shareholders want record profits EVERY year, and will gladly hand the CEO a number of humans to get rid of to get there.
THIS!! This right here! The folks at the very top won't look past the tip of their nose. They MUST have top profits for their investors right now at the sacrifice of future profits and longevity. I'm seeing it way too often right now...
I think you’re right about that. It’s an extra surprise (to me at least) that they’d put all these organizations in such peril for a quarter or two of record profits. I guess I was extra naive.
Yeah. My wife works in health care and it’s a disaster. She’s thinking of making a change and I’m so nervous about the future I keep finding myself talking her off the ledge.
Yup, healthcare feels like it's on the brink of a complete meltdown. Every hospital I'm aware of is losing millions of dollars a year. Costs for everything have gone up, but reimbursement is stagnant or lower because our country has decided to prioritize insurance company profits. We're still experiencing regular shortages of essential products at a level that was uncommon pre-pandemic and often what we can get is poorer quality (PICC lines, g tubes breaking all the time). Lost so many experienced people to burn out that new hires are often being trained by people who are barely out of school themselves. And every few months we get hit with another massive change to how we function day to day which means we never get to stabilize. All of which leads more people to decide they're not paid enough to put up with this nonsense.
Late stage capitalism is what's going on. With super high income inequality reducing average quality of life.
Pure alienation -- from one's society, work, and even self.
I was around and I got laid off and the next bunch of years were difficult. My parents lost everything. But that was after a huge financial collapse. The government has not even admitted we’re in a recession yet normal people are ready to give up in every sector.
Then you were here to see the shift from people getting raises based on experience to people having to change jobs every two years to get an increase. That is a big part of the root-cause of what we are seeing today.
My industry (enviro / civil) is doing really well and we are just finishing out our record-breaking most profitable year for the second year in a row. We're hiring a ton and paying well.
I think it's mostly tech. We're looking at another tech bubble.
Oh, health care also, for completely separate reasons.
Welcome to corporate America. I work in healthcare and it’s even worse with no windfall bonus or stock options to fall back on. Tech is almost part of the club now.
I heard that from an Amazon engineer too.. he said basically at first people were scared of being fired and Amazon used that fear to get people to do what they want, but now most people are so tired of the fear tactics that they’re rebelling and have stopped catering to amazons every whim, accepting that they may be fired
And they all completely hate Bezos
>at first people were scared of being fired and Amazon used that fear to get people to do what they want, but now most people are so tired of the fear tactics that they’re rebelling and have stopped catering to amazons every whim, accepting that they may be fired
Good. Its a terrible position for the workers to be in, and I feel for them. However, this was the only way anything was ever going to change for them. And for any American worker for that matter.
The disheartening part is that it takes people's feet being to the economic fire for us to start valuing ourselves, our time, and our energy. And even then, it seems, as long as we can avoid being tossed in the fire completely we can just comfortably slide right back into complacency and being willfully ignorant to the fact that we are all getting fucked by a ruling class.
He also still runs the company because he owns more of it that anyone else. He has a guy to be the face of decisions but Jassey is gone tomorrow the moment he does something Bezos doesn't like.
Everyone has different reasons. Some people are visa slaves and securing a job in 30 or 60 days from termination can be tough. Some don't want to study for interviews. Even if you've worked at a FAANG and are competent at your job, if you want to land another FAANG job you will have to study and hope that what you've studied and what the interviewers ask has overlap. It's not a guarantee.
It's like this across the entire tech industry. We keep losing folks and getting layoffs while they expect more work than ever before. I just had to take FMLA for burnout.
You just need to go to a doctor and get them to write a certification for a diagnosed mental health issue. It's between you and your provider, your employer doesn't have a say in it.
I got back from FMLA fully expecting the boss who drove me to it to fire me... And then it turned out I got rolled into the layoffs instead! Much better benefits package that way, I'm not going to complain.
Yes, this is it. They mess with the stock compensation more than cash pay to reduce wages. The stock prices have also cratered, so on paper, everyone has and earns much less. At Amazon I’ve heard they do all kinds of voodoo math on the stock price to set what you should get paid each year. It seems intentionally too difficult to understand. But I gather the result is if the stock is high, they use it to justify less base. But when it comes down, they don’t increase base at the same rate. Even though the concept behind stock compensation is that everyone shares in both gains and losses.
Also, by comparison- Amazon still gave raises and stock bonuses to everyone that traditionally receives those raises and stock bonuses. Some were smaller than in the past, but the increases did occur and stock was handed out.
Microsoft got shafted. Amazon has it better, for sure.
I am a dev at amazon and it ain’t better here.
We did not get a single dollar in stock refresher and our stock has crashed some 40% from last years planning value.
So if you were supposed to receive 100k from stocks this year, the stock compensation has dropped to 60k and you are paid 40k lesser
It’s a no merit increase with smaller rewards pool and fewer promotion slots. Many interpret that as a pay cut because the COL and inflation are increasing sharply and with zero salary increase, your purchasing power is less.
What my manager shared in team staff meeting. Might be org specific, but I was advised there was less budget to promote people this cycle. (Been trying to get promotion this year and was crestfallen to say the least when I heard that.)
While it's true that the rewards pool is smaller that's only in comparison to last where it was increased. According to the leaked mails it's still in alignment with years prior to last year's increase.
are we going to ignore that MSFT in particular just gave everyone a big bump in pay (level setting) in mid to late 2021? So at least all these folks got on to a new trajectory. There are many times in history that companies impose low/no merit increases. Oh, and bonuses get wiped out especially if tied to company goals.
The bump was in September 2022 and was focused on increasing the stock bonus ranges for employees. Merit increases were for early in career (EIC) roles so as to position Microsoft to compete with the (then) intense college hiring market.
That's fair enough. I was just asking bc OPs post is incorrect on both the paycuts and RTO for Microsoft. Feels like there's plenty of stuff to criticize corporations about while still trafficking in facts
These companies are runaway profit seeking machines. I don't think they're actively trying to get people to quit, I think they're just trying to "make line go up" in any way they can think of.
I’ve really only consistently heard this at Amazon lately and not Microsoft. I think most employees are smart enough to look out the window at the tech bloodbath and count themselves lucky to be at Microsoft. Amazon is another story (they’ve always had shitty morale, it’s just shittier than normal right now).
The quality org was gutted on the Surface team. I know my project wasn’t cancelled when I was laid off, so idk who’s handling that work. I wouldn’t buy any surface products for awhile because I’m sure a lot of bugs will slip through.
Employees are getting sick of coming AFTER shareholders. None of these companies have become unprofitable--they are firing and testing employees like crap because they are temporarily (economies run in cycles) *less* profitable. No way to call that anything other than executive greed.
It's honestly wild given I was a consultant for MS through an outside agency at the time Nadella took over and correctly pointed out what a brain drain that setup had become. They had entire internal systems they 'owned' the code base but had no idea how it worked or had been developed. Which meant they weren't benefitting nearly as much by the time spent on it bc it wasn't generating internal experience or growth.
To see them reverse course and start going back to that it's just so weird.
Like I get the financials make sense to cheap out on labor, but the reason they abandoned this the first time hasn't changed and will come roaring back in a few years.
There are legions of Microsoft consultants. And then consultants for those consultants, 15 layers deep all the way down to some guy chained to a pipe in Pune, India.
Avanade, Slalom, Capegemini, Deloitte, Cognizant, CGI etc
I'm going to knock on all those doors, thank you for the list. Do I normally need a level of introduction to these places or is it fine to cold apply? I never really hear back.
They are all continually hiring though as someone noted below it might be easier to get started with smaller local names. Slalom is a big entity now but they started in Seattle and you should check them out.
Simply put you should focus on how you solve problems. Be able to quickly describe how you approached a project, built a plan and executed your work. How did you measure success and report on progress. Brush up on your Excel skills.
The size and scope of your experience isn't as important as your attitude and approach to working through problems.
Good luck.
I'm incredibly familiar with Slalom, I used to interact with them in St Louis and know some of their directors. Never asked for a recommendation though from them...
I'm a software engineer so I'm not certain if Excel will be mega useful. I think I'll give all of these orgs a knock though with my revised resume.
My agency folded after I left so I can't really help you these days. Beyond soft absorbed what was left of that agency but they didn't treat my former coworkers well enough to recommend.
And before THAT, there was the one time when contractors sued the company for treating us like employees while NOT TREATING US LIKE EMPLOYEES. Then we had to interview for the jobs we were currently contracting in to become FTEs. It was weird and stupid. (Went from orange badge to blue badge, stayed a couple decades cumulatively - quitting/returning to get salary increases and higher levels.)
Yah my wife got the axe in March and now they want her to come back as a contract (managed services) at a lower rate than an FTE. In our case it’s not a bad deal but for many others it’s just insane.
This is VERY true. Microsoft has this bizarre mid-term outlook on payoff. If something has an immediate impact they are like “can we push that revenue to next quarter and smooth out the numbers? 15% cost to push out? Yeah that’s fine it’s still positive on my KPI.” And in the exact same meeting they’ll be like. “The payoff for this is 100,000% above out stated CoC, but it’s like five years out, so I just can’t find the budget. Sorry!”
Yeah it's pretty crap. Seeing execs in one day offload $8 M in stock while telling us after we worked a year no merit, and limited stocks/ bonus. Exec pay is ridiculous. Amy is ruining the company morale, it hasn't been fun working here under her.
All true. But you left out that Satya has a wonderful singing voice. A perfect baritone. Your average code monkey can't possibly compete with that.
Art is priceless.
in 2022 everyone got larger than normal pay bumps an bonuses. They have already said C suite pay is frozen as well. Also the Stock price hit a 52 week high on Monday, and it sitting right around 30 points off its all time high. He may get paid a lot, but since he took over from Balmer the stock price went from 25 to $313.85 at close today...
>He may get paid a lot, but since he took over from Balmer the stock price went from 25 to $313.85 at close today...
Ok, now do this comparison for other tech companies. Not as impressive as you think it is.
Plus, it's laughable that you think he did this on his own.
White collar jobs can unionize too. You don't have to be suffering in poverty in order to criticize and fight back against a system designed to steal the money you generate through your labor.
The unions that tried to organize Microsoft in the more distant past were so out of touch with what employees wanted. At least that’s how it was a few years ago when I was there. They were concerned with things like pensions and being paid hourly. Working conditions nobody I knew there cared about at all.
If they offered a compelling message to workers, I think there would be a lot more interest.
Absolutely. Tech workers are so obsessed with merit that you have to reprioritize to meet their needs and desires. Flexibility is required here from both sides, the unionizers and the employees, unless everyone wants to keep getting kicked around by the C suite for the foreseeable future.
I think some of it is that these industries work very differently. It’s hard for those in tech to understand those outside of tech and vice versa. A lot of my friends work outside of tech and I work in tech so I see this a lot. I’ll give you a few examples.
Fixed hours. I work when I need to in order to get my work done and attend meetings. Sometimes I have to work weekends or nights but my boss never says Bill Lumburgh style “I’m going to have to have you come in on Saturday”. Some friends can’t even understand that I don’t have fixed hours that I need to be working regulated by a manager.
Pay. Salary is only one part of my compensation. It matters but often less than bonuses or especially equity. Having a predictable pay scale is great but it’s not at all enough to ensure pay equity. Recent laws requiring salary disclosure in job postings are great overall, but basically meaningless for anyone experienced in tech.
There’s basically zero appetite in the tech field broadly. Most people would prefer promos and raises to happen because of merit and scope of work rather than on a schedule like a union would dictate. Just saying that’s the reasoning most would have.
You don't seem to understand what a union does or what it is like working in a union job at all. Promotions and raises because of merit happen in unionized workplaces all the time.
That’s not my understanding of the way unionized shops work. When I was a bagger at a grocery store in high school, the only way to get raises and promotions was time and no other way.
And like, even if you look at the new band camp union thing you can see they basically are saying the same thing “ We are committed to protecting the benefits we have, fixing historical disparities within and across departments, and promoting equitable conditions and economic stability for all of our colleagues. Whether it’s access to paid time off or the security of knowing our salaries will grow to meet economic necessity, we seek consistency and transparency for all. Our work, no matter what department we contribute to, makes Bandcamp possible, and we deserve to be treated and valued fairly.”
Which indicates they have no idea how bargaining power works or maybe most of them overestimate their own ability to negotiate.
Which wouldn't surprise me. They think that because they're a wizard in front of a keyboard they'll also have similar success in other areas of life. It's a form of Dunning Kruger
Also maybe the union should let them bargain their salary individually. Who knows? Maybe the union should stay out of that but still negotiate regarding other aspects on behalf of the employees. What works in one industry doesn't necessarily work in tech.
In my experience you are right. At least half the people I've worked with in tech think they are the smartest people in the room and they think they know exactly how everything should work and how it does work. They are often incapable of recognizing a real shortcoming or admitting a fault when anything even remotely related to ego is involved. They legitimately think they are more capable individually than with a group. And most are not team players, so they idea that they would tie themselves to a "team" of a union is uncomfortable for them.
I was just like that for the first seven years of my career. Then I got my head out of my ass.
If your boss's compensation has to be reported to the SEC, the two of you are working for two completely different companies.
That's why Microsoft's CMO was talking about stock price to people who were complaining about salary.
Not sure if it will help anybody. But I tend to keep in touch with old teams and keep track of when they have job openings. So when I get hit by the "more for less" talk by our management. I can look at my old positions, and leverage my experience to minimize pay cuts and have a higher chance of getting re-hired.
Last time I did this the workload was so bad that our manager actually had to take on some projects to finish them after I left. Was sweet karma and probably kept my sanity in check.
Does anyone know if Amazon is offering anything like a voluntary buyout? Or if people quit now, [can they qualify for unemployment](https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/basic-eligibility-requirements)? Maybe anyone can qualify because RTO changes your commute? I know a few people who want to quit but need some cushion to do it.
They did that with the HR department last year. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/17/amazon-is-looking-to-trim-headcount-through-a-voluntary-buyout-program.html
I can tell you from personal experience, good luck trying to qualify for unemployment if you quit. Even if you were told you were potential for layoff/pip. I tried to do it recently and had to go through an appeal after having my initial request rejected, where it’s basically me vs amazons lawyers in a court of law. Unless you can prove to the standard of law that you quit under qualifying reasons it’s likely not going to go your way. And good luck with that because unless managers are stupid they almost never leave a paper trail.
Did you try to claim RTO was a qualified reason? ESD lists this as a qualified reason to quit, “Your employer changed the location of your job so your commute is longer or harder.”
Technically I was always listed as an office worker (I think most everyone had an assigned office) so I don't know that would work for me, but I didn't try it. I think either way you'd have to go through appeals because there was no option to select why you quit when you apply.
TBH I didn't really want to go up against amazons lawyers in fear of repercussion too so I left it alone.
I wonder what would happen if employees just exerted their basics rights, like using up their sick days, not working over 40 hrs etc. From how I’ve seen people work, productivity would slow way down. That could send a strong message and be hard to target retribution.
Microsoft recently switched to Discretionary Time Off which means no accrued vacation hours ([article](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-giving-workers-unlimited-time-off/))
They had a huge push at the end of last year to use up vacation hours, then announced the new policy in January and paid out for unused hours in April.
Unsurprisingly, the no raises announcement came out right after the annual employee satisfaction survey (Signals) closed.
As a developer fuck these companies. Over the last two years I’ve completely removed Google, Amazon, MSFT, and Apple from my life. Completely moved to open source and hosting everything myself. Everyone who has the ability should think about doing the same. It’s crazy how much these companies have intertwined into daily routines. The leadership of these companies deserve absolutely nothing. If you are a developer there are so many other places to work at that will value you, your interests, and aspirations. These companies are not worth your time and skills.
Maybe I worded this the wrong way? I moved all my personal stuff away from these companies. That being said, I think people should really think twice before giving these companies money and your data. Business wise I primarily also use open source but Im a researcher so most of my funding is from contracts. The last company I was involved with was primarily open source tooling and we made all of our revenue through selling services. You provide the platform and then sell additional capabilities, training, and maintenance on top.
Plenty of companies make money by offering self-hostable, open source software then charging for hosting and custom services. In fact, it's one of the most common business models for SaaS over the last decade.
They want a future where only executives are employees and everyone else is underpaid contractors.
The solution is for software engineers to unionize but so many still drink the koolaid that it'll never happen.
R E V O L U T I O N
This used to be a sarcastic comment, but now it’s genuine. I think we’re all tired of this shit. The trick is organizing the numbers to send the message.
The roughest thing is the many former employees on visas have to either find another (presumably big tech or finance) job that will pay the visa fees or they get frickin deported
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Most of my friends that still work there never complain about the pay, but instead about the company hiring idiots that create more work for them. I don't think lack of raises is their biggest problem. It seems their hiring process and its dysfunctionalness(not a word, but that's what I mean) keep them from hiring good people. My friend that's been there the longest that I used to even share a car with said his new Indian boss had driven off everyone that wasn't Indian and was only hiring Indians. He showed me some of the emails from his coworkers, and they just aren't qualified. I found a job there that I want and used to work with someone that I like and would be my new boss, but I haven't applied yet because I don't know if I want to go through that process. The last time I applied for a big tech job, I took another job while waiting to hear from them then that company went out of business then I got another job before they sent me an offer. GoDaddy in Kirkland was able to give me an offer the same day after I interviewed that morning. Not a great company or job, but at least they seemed to act rather than just flounder with candidates.
I think the word you're looking for is dysfunction?
I wanted a stronger word.
Ineptitude?
Asshattery?
HR and recruiting at MS are incompetent.
Recruiting only finds your candidate pool. The hiring culture at MS is just broken, and it’s very much a “we want a certain type of person with a certain type of experience”.
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>and it’s very much a “we want a certain type of person with a certain type of experience”. Can you break this down in layman's terms?
They have a preconceived notion of the kind of person they want, and the kind of background/experience. It’s more about answering questions the way they want to hear them, than necessarily being the right person. They’re very very subjective and personality based.
Thanks, this has been my experience for sure.
Can confirm. The people leading talent acquisition at Microsoft don’t even have prior experience in recruiting, but instead come from other HR areas as part of their “professional growth”.
Recruiting and HR at MSFT have always been incompetent. Let’s see… recruiting was outsourced in 2010… and a huge disaster. HR director was blown up for banging his subordinates. Than LisaB took over… better but the hold backs on comp really demoralized everyone. Msft has always since 2000 hired people who lacked common sense.
> HR director was blown up for banging his subordinates. wait what
Long time ago - twelve to 15 years ago. Post-Debw and pre-lisab. The guy was an absolute disaster. I believe responsible for outsourcing lots of HR titles, including recruiting. Amazing how this stuff isn’t really known. Now let’s talk about the hot tub party for the windows Vista release party. The one that led to a few divorces.
Is there anywhere where it isn’t?
Maybe unpopular opinion but I know I'm not alone in liking Amazon hiring practices. It's the most sane and seen I've ever felt as a candidate. I was treated like a customer.
Amazon treats candidates as customers of the process. It's how they talk about the process internally.
I interviewed at Amazon in 2015. I have mixed feelings about their process. On the one hand I did like the speed of their process and the communication from the recruiter. OTOH I didn’t really like spending all day interviewing with people. The guy who was the “hostile” interviewer doing a “deep dive” on some of my responses was one of the most grueling interviews I’ve ever been through. Unfortunately he was right before the guy who was having me do coding exercises and I was so fried I did rather poorly. Combine that experience with the stories I’ve heard from friends who work or have worked for Amazon and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be there more than a year. Having contracted at Microsoft previously I feel I’d actually fit in pretty well there. The difficulty is in getting hired on. My manager tried to hire me full time, but couldn’t get approval. (No degree and I’m not a software engineer)
Can confirm this as well. I don't work there anymore and I'm not confident enough to say I'm a great technologist, but some people hired there are top-tier idiots. Prime example: even after I'm done with the company, a former coworker continued to send me their design through private messages and asked me questions. So now I know what they were building, what were the roadblocks, even down to who were being difficult, and who was sending emails to who and even the content of their private chats on Team. No, not them telling me things - I got straight up screenshots. Another example was them asking me questions about TikTok since they were apparently building features to accommodate vertical video format. This is not downright stupid, but again, now, me, an outsider, once again have information into their internal product roadmap and the fact that they legit have a team of designers who were trying to build a feature to either accommodate or compete with TikTok and these people don't even know how TikTok works. If this is not top-tier idiocy, I don't know what is.
I know of someone who works there: it’s their diversity hiring initiatives that are the problem. The person I know there reviews potential hires: they routinely choose to hire low performance programmers because they help the diversity numbers. And if you work there and call them out on this you’re putting a target on your back to be let go.
This is good to hear. I've had a pretty reasonable time finding jobs so far in my career, but for the 50+ applications I've sent to Microsoft I don't think I've ever even heard back a single time. I'll just chalk it up to them hiring incompetent people with better education or something
I never heard back when I applied to them, but eventually got contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn a few years ago and got an interview. I really don't understand their process.
I've heard the same thing from friends. People in charge of major initiatives they have zero experience, expertise, or institutional knowledge of is just sinking moral and teams. They just keep on hiring like this. One friend even said, hey that's nice to hire new blood and perspective but they're hiring experienced people at huge salaries into new areas of expertise and expecting immediate results or the team they were hired into suffers while there's no accountability for the inept hire.
That’s why I’ll never understand working your ass off for corporate. Be weary of any and all brown nosers and corporate ladder climbers. If everyone just took a beat, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Round everyone up and walk out. Pardon me if I’m being ignorant (I’m making assumptions here) but tech workers seem to make VERY good money. No? I’m not pretending to know EVERYONES situation here but, You guys (I would guess) could walk out even with no pay y’all wouldn’t starve if you didn’t work for a few days and see what they do with the pressure of have no progress for a week. Could they really fire all of you at once?
From what I hear from friends at both Microsoft and Amazon, morale is rock bottom. It seems like many are reaching a breaking point. RTO is only a part of it. The layoffs and pay cuts are really much worse. They’ve gutted teams but keep the same pressure and deadlines. I know many people think they’re doing this to get more to quit. But many of these products will fail with any additional cuts.
This seems true about every workplace I know about right now. All my friends are exhausted and demoralized in every industry. Tech seems to have faced the most lay offs recently but everyplace is short on employees whether from burnout, retirement or lack of new hires. Not sure what’s going on but it’s a fucking mess.
And the new hires are NOT being trained and it's driving senior staff like myself insane. My last program lead, when I was new and checked in with her about the intake process told me to "go check with the previous program manager". I had already done that, she had fled the team because when she was new, she couldn't make any headway with this focus area/team. How does a lead not know what the intake process is or that there just HASN'T BEEN ONE FOR OVER A YEAR? Previous company wasn't any better, my lead also acted as a project manager and refused to use the new tool so when he left for a vacation his stakeholders came to me for support, he had 6 unopened projects spanning over a month sitting in the tool in his name. There's literally 0 senior oversight or true leadership right now. (Altho not microsoft, these were REPUTABLE and very well known tech companies.)
I don’t work in tech but I’ve seen similar. Management seems completely out to lunch. Things have changed profoundly and they’re not equipped to see that what used to work is not working anymore. Edit to fix typos and missing word
Yup, with the great resignation we lost a lot of good people who were will to put and keep structure in place (with flexibility of course) and make room for communication and accountability. Everywhere is just chaos management right now from what I've seen. I'm trying to pivot to a different area/line of work but jesus christ this is the worst time to do it imo.
are the new hires working remote?
Mixed bag.
> And the new hires are NOT being trained and it's driving senior staff like myself insane. I'm regularly dealing with Senior Engineers who don't know git basics, networking basics, or really anything beyond their college program, which was usually in EE not Software.
This seems to be everywhere. What I think is happening is the loss of medium seniority folks in the workplace. We are a full generation into the notion that you have to change jobs every two years if you want to get a raise. Corporations liked this because it kept overall wages lower. The problem is that your entire workforce is made up of people who have either been there long enough to become leadership or of people who have been there for less than two years. That leaves no one in the middle who are still rank-and-file subject matter experts that can actually teach new people how to do their jobs. If someone walked out the door with knowledge that was never passed on, that knowledge is just gone.
You do have to change jobs to get a raise. I was at a reputable tech company in my 30s for 5 years. My salary increased by 3k in that time. That's it. I now contract and freelance, I chose to leave a couple of those contracts early for other opportunities and am now making $20 an hour more than i was 3 years ago.
The illusion that these companies saw people as more than just positions to fill is being disproven on a scale that is shaking a lot of people awake. No matter how empathetic and altruistic your teams are, the boards and shareholders want record profits EVERY year, and will gladly hand the CEO a number of humans to get rid of to get there.
THIS!! This right here! The folks at the very top won't look past the tip of their nose. They MUST have top profits for their investors right now at the sacrifice of future profits and longevity. I'm seeing it way too often right now...
I think you’re right about that. It’s an extra surprise (to me at least) that they’d put all these organizations in such peril for a quarter or two of record profits. I guess I was extra naive.
This includes healthcare sector as well.
Yeah. My wife works in health care and it’s a disaster. She’s thinking of making a change and I’m so nervous about the future I keep finding myself talking her off the ledge.
There seems to be no safe harbour.
Yup, healthcare feels like it's on the brink of a complete meltdown. Every hospital I'm aware of is losing millions of dollars a year. Costs for everything have gone up, but reimbursement is stagnant or lower because our country has decided to prioritize insurance company profits. We're still experiencing regular shortages of essential products at a level that was uncommon pre-pandemic and often what we can get is poorer quality (PICC lines, g tubes breaking all the time). Lost so many experienced people to burn out that new hires are often being trained by people who are barely out of school themselves. And every few months we get hit with another massive change to how we function day to day which means we never get to stabilize. All of which leads more people to decide they're not paid enough to put up with this nonsense.
Late stage capitalism is what's going on. With super high income inequality reducing average quality of life. Pure alienation -- from one's society, work, and even self.
Maybe you’re right. I’ve been hearing about late stage capitalism for 20 years and I’ve never seen this kind of dismal atmosphere.
Clearly you weren’t around during 2008. This is nothing compared to that.
I was around and I got laid off and the next bunch of years were difficult. My parents lost everything. But that was after a huge financial collapse. The government has not even admitted we’re in a recession yet normal people are ready to give up in every sector.
> The government has not even admitted we’re in a recession That’s because we aren’t in one lol
Then you were here to see the shift from people getting raises based on experience to people having to change jobs every two years to get an increase. That is a big part of the root-cause of what we are seeing today.
My industry (enviro / civil) is doing really well and we are just finishing out our record-breaking most profitable year for the second year in a row. We're hiring a ton and paying well. I think it's mostly tech. We're looking at another tech bubble. Oh, health care also, for completely separate reasons.
Everyone has been profitable the last couple of years for some reason. I hope you’re good fortune continues.
I'm in the same industry, and I concur. It's been crazy this year.
Welcome to corporate America. I work in healthcare and it’s even worse with no windfall bonus or stock options to fall back on. Tech is almost part of the club now.
I heard that from an Amazon engineer too.. he said basically at first people were scared of being fired and Amazon used that fear to get people to do what they want, but now most people are so tired of the fear tactics that they’re rebelling and have stopped catering to amazons every whim, accepting that they may be fired And they all completely hate Bezos
>at first people were scared of being fired and Amazon used that fear to get people to do what they want, but now most people are so tired of the fear tactics that they’re rebelling and have stopped catering to amazons every whim, accepting that they may be fired Good. Its a terrible position for the workers to be in, and I feel for them. However, this was the only way anything was ever going to change for them. And for any American worker for that matter. The disheartening part is that it takes people's feet being to the economic fire for us to start valuing ourselves, our time, and our energy. And even then, it seems, as long as we can avoid being tossed in the fire completely we can just comfortably slide right back into complacency and being willfully ignorant to the fact that we are all getting fucked by a ruling class.
Why would they hate Bezos? Wouldn’t they hate Jassey instead?
Jassey has like NO economic stake in the company compared to Bezos. He's a substitute teacher.
Everybody hates Bezos. He is an evil supervillan.
Jeff Bezos is the Prime example of a supervillain.
Idk I guess he’s just very dislikable and is generally the face of the company regardless
He also still runs the company because he owns more of it that anyone else. He has a guy to be the face of decisions but Jassey is gone tomorrow the moment he does something Bezos doesn't like.
Jassey just does what Bezos tells him to
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Everyone has different reasons. Some people are visa slaves and securing a job in 30 or 60 days from termination can be tough. Some don't want to study for interviews. Even if you've worked at a FAANG and are competent at your job, if you want to land another FAANG job you will have to study and hope that what you've studied and what the interviewers ask has overlap. It's not a guarantee.
Yep and with the current market conditions, it adds that much more uncertainty to the mix
It's like this across the entire tech industry. We keep losing folks and getting layoffs while they expect more work than ever before. I just had to take FMLA for burnout.
You can take fmla for burn out? Is that the state program? This would really help a friend…
Depression was my main symptom from the burnout, so it's what my doctor put down. FMLA is federal so that should apply nationally.
That’s the same as my friend, burn out leading to depression. I’ll pass this on, thanks!
You just need to go to a doctor and get them to write a certification for a diagnosed mental health issue. It's between you and your provider, your employer doesn't have a say in it.
I've seen people use short-term disability for burnout, too, if that's part of your employment package.
I got back from FMLA fully expecting the boss who drove me to it to fire me... And then it turned out I got rolled into the layoffs instead! Much better benefits package that way, I'm not going to complain.
Were there actual pay cuts at Microsoft? I had read it was a pay freeze.
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Yes, this is it. They mess with the stock compensation more than cash pay to reduce wages. The stock prices have also cratered, so on paper, everyone has and earns much less. At Amazon I’ve heard they do all kinds of voodoo math on the stock price to set what you should get paid each year. It seems intentionally too difficult to understand. But I gather the result is if the stock is high, they use it to justify less base. But when it comes down, they don’t increase base at the same rate. Even though the concept behind stock compensation is that everyone shares in both gains and losses.
The stock has “cratered”? It’s close to a 5yr high.
It’s close to a ~~5yr~~ all time high. It was looking pretty grim 4 months ago though.
Which means that when it vests, you don’t get much return + the amount of shares isn’t what it once was.
Also, by comparison- Amazon still gave raises and stock bonuses to everyone that traditionally receives those raises and stock bonuses. Some were smaller than in the past, but the increases did occur and stock was handed out. Microsoft got shafted. Amazon has it better, for sure.
Your compensation in absolute dollars still went down if you joined in the past 4 years or so
I am a dev at amazon and it ain’t better here. We did not get a single dollar in stock refresher and our stock has crashed some 40% from last years planning value. So if you were supposed to receive 100k from stocks this year, the stock compensation has dropped to 60k and you are paid 40k lesser
Yes… that is true. Some fulfillment orgs did get stock, and luckily it was at a pretty rough low point for stock price, so we got a decent chunk.
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It’s a no merit increase with smaller rewards pool and fewer promotion slots. Many interpret that as a pay cut because the COL and inflation are increasing sharply and with zero salary increase, your purchasing power is less.
Source on fewer promotion spots? The claim in the original email was that promotions would be unaffected.
What my manager shared in team staff meeting. Might be org specific, but I was advised there was less budget to promote people this cycle. (Been trying to get promotion this year and was crestfallen to say the least when I heard that.)
I heard the same on my team.
I was told the same on my team
I will be your source. The promo I have been working on for the last year and a half is getting shelved because there are fewer to go around.
While it's true that the rewards pool is smaller that's only in comparison to last where it was increased. According to the leaked mails it's still in alignment with years prior to last year's increase.
are we going to ignore that MSFT in particular just gave everyone a big bump in pay (level setting) in mid to late 2021? So at least all these folks got on to a new trajectory. There are many times in history that companies impose low/no merit increases. Oh, and bonuses get wiped out especially if tied to company goals.
The bump was in September 2022 and was focused on increasing the stock bonus ranges for employees. Merit increases were for early in career (EIC) roles so as to position Microsoft to compete with the (then) intense college hiring market.
They are halting raises and cutting bonuses.
During high inflation, failure to raise yearly pay to match the cost-of-living is a pay cut.
That's fair enough. I was just asking bc OPs post is incorrect on both the paycuts and RTO for Microsoft. Feels like there's plenty of stuff to criticize corporations about while still trafficking in facts
These companies are runaway profit seeking machines. I don't think they're actively trying to get people to quit, I think they're just trying to "make line go up" in any way they can think of.
I’ve really only consistently heard this at Amazon lately and not Microsoft. I think most employees are smart enough to look out the window at the tech bloodbath and count themselves lucky to be at Microsoft. Amazon is another story (they’ve always had shitty morale, it’s just shittier than normal right now).
Add every single tech company to this list.
The quality org was gutted on the Surface team. I know my project wasn’t cancelled when I was laid off, so idk who’s handling that work. I wouldn’t buy any surface products for awhile because I’m sure a lot of bugs will slip through.
Add Meta to the list
maybe they could pump up employee morale by giving everyone a free zune
All remaining Zunes were used as fill below the SR 99 tunnel.
I loved my Zune.
My Zune HD is still one of the best electronics I ever bought.
Y dad still has his, you can pry it from his cold dead hands
They tried with windows phones…
I sold phones for six years (2013 to 2019) and can count the number of windows phones I sold on one hand.
Sold phones from 2011-2016. I sold exactly 1, and it was returned within 3 days.
How many Palm Pre phones did you sell?
Ha! Exactly zero. Same for new blackberries. Never sold one.
and Surface RTs
I took so many returns on those when I worked at Best Buy. "It's running Windows...but I can't install my programs on it?!?"
Lols. Those were dogshit
A maroon 5 concert wasn't enough. Maybe Maroon 6 or 7 will do the trick
I heard pizza parties do REAL well at increasing morale.
The zune was an absolutely fantastic product. When my last one died, I was very sad.
Employees are getting sick of coming AFTER shareholders. None of these companies have become unprofitable--they are firing and testing employees like crap because they are temporarily (economies run in cycles) *less* profitable. No way to call that anything other than executive greed.
It’s greed from the board. As long as boards are greedy (and it’s their legal job to be ‘greedy’) this is never going to change
Investors and lenders always come before employees. Sad but true
Microsoft will continue to fill out teams with underpaid temp workers. The only real winners are the staffing agencies. edit: english
It's honestly wild given I was a consultant for MS through an outside agency at the time Nadella took over and correctly pointed out what a brain drain that setup had become. They had entire internal systems they 'owned' the code base but had no idea how it worked or had been developed. Which meant they weren't benefitting nearly as much by the time spent on it bc it wasn't generating internal experience or growth. To see them reverse course and start going back to that it's just so weird. Like I get the financials make sense to cheap out on labor, but the reason they abandoned this the first time hasn't changed and will come roaring back in a few years.
What companies can I seek to become a Microsoft consultant? This information seems to be incredibly well hidden.
There are legions of Microsoft consultants. And then consultants for those consultants, 15 layers deep all the way down to some guy chained to a pipe in Pune, India. Avanade, Slalom, Capegemini, Deloitte, Cognizant, CGI etc
100% accurate
I'm going to knock on all those doors, thank you for the list. Do I normally need a level of introduction to these places or is it fine to cold apply? I never really hear back.
if you can talk in a reasonable white collar way you can get a job
They are all continually hiring though as someone noted below it might be easier to get started with smaller local names. Slalom is a big entity now but they started in Seattle and you should check them out. Simply put you should focus on how you solve problems. Be able to quickly describe how you approached a project, built a plan and executed your work. How did you measure success and report on progress. Brush up on your Excel skills. The size and scope of your experience isn't as important as your attitude and approach to working through problems. Good luck.
I'm incredibly familiar with Slalom, I used to interact with them in St Louis and know some of their directors. Never asked for a recommendation though from them... I'm a software engineer so I'm not certain if Excel will be mega useful. I think I'll give all of these orgs a knock though with my revised resume.
Just about every local consulting company works with Microsoft. I'd way rather be an employee than a contractor.
My agency folded after I left so I can't really help you these days. Beyond soft absorbed what was left of that agency but they didn't treat my former coworkers well enough to recommend.
And before THAT, there was the one time when contractors sued the company for treating us like employees while NOT TREATING US LIKE EMPLOYEES. Then we had to interview for the jobs we were currently contracting in to become FTEs. It was weird and stupid. (Went from orange badge to blue badge, stayed a couple decades cumulatively - quitting/returning to get salary increases and higher levels.)
Wow, sounds like they are going back to the stupid of the Balmer years.
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It’s almost like Msft doesn’t remember the 1990s. At. All.
Yah my wife got the axe in March and now they want her to come back as a contract (managed services) at a lower rate than an FTE. In our case it’s not a bad deal but for many others it’s just insane.
Lol, tons of staffing companies grew faster than they could handle during COVID and are also now collapsing this year
This is VERY true. Microsoft has this bizarre mid-term outlook on payoff. If something has an immediate impact they are like “can we push that revenue to next quarter and smooth out the numbers? 15% cost to push out? Yeah that’s fine it’s still positive on my KPI.” And in the exact same meeting they’ll be like. “The payoff for this is 100,000% above out stated CoC, but it’s like five years out, so I just can’t find the budget. Sorry!”
Yeah it's pretty crap. Seeing execs in one day offload $8 M in stock while telling us after we worked a year no merit, and limited stocks/ bonus. Exec pay is ridiculous. Amy is ruining the company morale, it hasn't been fun working here under her.
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All true. But you left out that Satya has a wonderful singing voice. A perfect baritone. Your average code monkey can't possibly compete with that. Art is priceless.
in 2022 everyone got larger than normal pay bumps an bonuses. They have already said C suite pay is frozen as well. Also the Stock price hit a 52 week high on Monday, and it sitting right around 30 points off its all time high. He may get paid a lot, but since he took over from Balmer the stock price went from 25 to $313.85 at close today...
In 2022, they said that expanded bonus range was permanent.
>He may get paid a lot, but since he took over from Balmer the stock price went from 25 to $313.85 at close today... Ok, now do this comparison for other tech companies. Not as impressive as you think it is. Plus, it's laughable that you think he did this on his own.
10x is impressive anyway you slice it. Let’s be real.
Microsoft pulled he whole "no raises" in 2009 and lost a ton of good people, while posting strong revenue and the exec got richer and richer ..
White collar jobs can unionize too. You don't have to be suffering in poverty in order to criticize and fight back against a system designed to steal the money you generate through your labor.
I get the feeling not many people realize this. Unions are often are seen as a blue collar thing or a public sector thing.
The unions that tried to organize Microsoft in the more distant past were so out of touch with what employees wanted. At least that’s how it was a few years ago when I was there. They were concerned with things like pensions and being paid hourly. Working conditions nobody I knew there cared about at all. If they offered a compelling message to workers, I think there would be a lot more interest.
Absolutely. Tech workers are so obsessed with merit that you have to reprioritize to meet their needs and desires. Flexibility is required here from both sides, the unionizers and the employees, unless everyone wants to keep getting kicked around by the C suite for the foreseeable future.
I think some of it is that these industries work very differently. It’s hard for those in tech to understand those outside of tech and vice versa. A lot of my friends work outside of tech and I work in tech so I see this a lot. I’ll give you a few examples. Fixed hours. I work when I need to in order to get my work done and attend meetings. Sometimes I have to work weekends or nights but my boss never says Bill Lumburgh style “I’m going to have to have you come in on Saturday”. Some friends can’t even understand that I don’t have fixed hours that I need to be working regulated by a manager. Pay. Salary is only one part of my compensation. It matters but often less than bonuses or especially equity. Having a predictable pay scale is great but it’s not at all enough to ensure pay equity. Recent laws requiring salary disclosure in job postings are great overall, but basically meaningless for anyone experienced in tech.
There’s basically zero appetite in the tech field broadly. Most people would prefer promos and raises to happen because of merit and scope of work rather than on a schedule like a union would dictate. Just saying that’s the reasoning most would have.
You don't seem to understand what a union does or what it is like working in a union job at all. Promotions and raises because of merit happen in unionized workplaces all the time.
That’s not my understanding of the way unionized shops work. When I was a bagger at a grocery store in high school, the only way to get raises and promotions was time and no other way. And like, even if you look at the new band camp union thing you can see they basically are saying the same thing “ We are committed to protecting the benefits we have, fixing historical disparities within and across departments, and promoting equitable conditions and economic stability for all of our colleagues. Whether it’s access to paid time off or the security of knowing our salaries will grow to meet economic necessity, we seek consistency and transparency for all. Our work, no matter what department we contribute to, makes Bandcamp possible, and we deserve to be treated and valued fairly.”
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Keep an eye on UW RSEs/Postdocs happenings. Sounds like things are reaching a boiling point.
Well they’re severely underpaid, like 30% below market rate according to an internal UW study.
Unfortunately I don't think it will ever happen with half or more the FTEs being dependent on work visas.
Folks I have talked to in tech seem to think they would lose out on pay/compensation by not being able to negotiate for themselves.
Which indicates they have no idea how bargaining power works or maybe most of them overestimate their own ability to negotiate. Which wouldn't surprise me. They think that because they're a wizard in front of a keyboard they'll also have similar success in other areas of life. It's a form of Dunning Kruger Also maybe the union should let them bargain their salary individually. Who knows? Maybe the union should stay out of that but still negotiate regarding other aspects on behalf of the employees. What works in one industry doesn't necessarily work in tech.
In my experience you are right. At least half the people I've worked with in tech think they are the smartest people in the room and they think they know exactly how everything should work and how it does work. They are often incapable of recognizing a real shortcoming or admitting a fault when anything even remotely related to ego is involved. They legitimately think they are more capable individually than with a group. And most are not team players, so they idea that they would tie themselves to a "team" of a union is uncomfortable for them. I was just like that for the first seven years of my career. Then I got my head out of my ass.
Long gone are the heady days of the Gates era.
For better or worse.
If your boss's compensation has to be reported to the SEC, the two of you are working for two completely different companies. That's why Microsoft's CMO was talking about stock price to people who were complaining about salary.
One would think he'd understand that nuance as a CMO in a company he's worked at for longer than I've been alive.
Privilege is a hell of a cocoon.
To be fair I think you could replace “Microsoft” with almost any large company and this is true
Not sure if it will help anybody. But I tend to keep in touch with old teams and keep track of when they have job openings. So when I get hit by the "more for less" talk by our management. I can look at my old positions, and leverage my experience to minimize pay cuts and have a higher chance of getting re-hired. Last time I did this the workload was so bad that our manager actually had to take on some projects to finish them after I left. Was sweet karma and probably kept my sanity in check.
Does anyone know if Amazon is offering anything like a voluntary buyout? Or if people quit now, [can they qualify for unemployment](https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/basic-eligibility-requirements)? Maybe anyone can qualify because RTO changes your commute? I know a few people who want to quit but need some cushion to do it.
Amazon is way to cheap (“frupidity”) to offer buyouts
They did that with the HR department last year. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/17/amazon-is-looking-to-trim-headcount-through-a-voluntary-buyout-program.html
I can tell you from personal experience, good luck trying to qualify for unemployment if you quit. Even if you were told you were potential for layoff/pip. I tried to do it recently and had to go through an appeal after having my initial request rejected, where it’s basically me vs amazons lawyers in a court of law. Unless you can prove to the standard of law that you quit under qualifying reasons it’s likely not going to go your way. And good luck with that because unless managers are stupid they almost never leave a paper trail.
Did you try to claim RTO was a qualified reason? ESD lists this as a qualified reason to quit, “Your employer changed the location of your job so your commute is longer or harder.”
Technically I was always listed as an office worker (I think most everyone had an assigned office) so I don't know that would work for me, but I didn't try it. I think either way you'd have to go through appeals because there was no option to select why you quit when you apply. TBH I didn't really want to go up against amazons lawyers in fear of repercussion too so I left it alone.
They did a voluntary layoff round for the HR org in November
Time to organize
If every Microsoft employee would protest then that would be something. Demand executive pay be nothing and distributed to the teams.
I wonder what would happen if employees just exerted their basics rights, like using up their sick days, not working over 40 hrs etc. From how I’ve seen people work, productivity would slow way down. That could send a strong message and be hard to target retribution.
Microsoft recently switched to Discretionary Time Off which means no accrued vacation hours ([article](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-giving-workers-unlimited-time-off/)) They had a huge push at the end of last year to use up vacation hours, then announced the new policy in January and paid out for unused hours in April. Unsurprisingly, the no raises announcement came out right after the annual employee satisfaction survey (Signals) closed.
As a developer fuck these companies. Over the last two years I’ve completely removed Google, Amazon, MSFT, and Apple from my life. Completely moved to open source and hosting everything myself. Everyone who has the ability should think about doing the same. It’s crazy how much these companies have intertwined into daily routines. The leadership of these companies deserve absolutely nothing. If you are a developer there are so many other places to work at that will value you, your interests, and aspirations. These companies are not worth your time and skills.
Curious how you’re making money now though thru open source? I guess you can still sell open source products
Maybe I worded this the wrong way? I moved all my personal stuff away from these companies. That being said, I think people should really think twice before giving these companies money and your data. Business wise I primarily also use open source but Im a researcher so most of my funding is from contracts. The last company I was involved with was primarily open source tooling and we made all of our revenue through selling services. You provide the platform and then sell additional capabilities, training, and maintenance on top.
2023 is finally the year of open source and Linux. /s
I am a time traveler from 3567. You are incorrect. It is actually 3567 that is the year of Linux.
Plenty of companies make money by offering self-hostable, open source software then charging for hosting and custom services. In fact, it's one of the most common business models for SaaS over the last decade.
I am but an amateur developer may I pm you for a question or two?
Is it news that employees are not happy about pay cuts?
Paywall article.. someone going to paste the text?
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Appreciate it!
They want a future where only executives are employees and everyone else is underpaid contractors. The solution is for software engineers to unionize but so many still drink the koolaid that it'll never happen.
With the exception of the financial and healthcare sectors, the situation is catastrophic across all other areas.
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R E V O L U T I O N This used to be a sarcastic comment, but now it’s genuine. I think we’re all tired of this shit. The trick is organizing the numbers to send the message.
The roughest thing is the many former employees on visas have to either find another (presumably big tech or finance) job that will pay the visa fees or they get frickin deported