Leaked Microsoft memo tells managers not to use budget cuts as an explainer for lack of pay rises: ‘Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact’
Leaked Microsoft memo tells managers not to use budget cuts as an explainer for lack of pay rises: ‘Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact’
Managers are being ordered to dodge employees' questions about how the latest budget cuts will impact their pay.
Leaked Microsoft memo tells managers not to use budget cuts as an explainer for lack of pay rises: ‘Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact’::Managers are being ordered to dodge employees' questions about how the latest budget cuts will impact their pay.
This is so backwards. I had to read this a few times to try to make sense of the memo. Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn't get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?
That's stupid. That would obviously have the opposite effect of softening the disappointment. Whoever wrote this memo is an idiot who has no idea what employees do or what they think.
It's only stupid if you think Microsoft wants to retain employees.
The tech industry is contracting after over expanding during the pandemic and, instead of layoffs, MS is hoping to get to their budget cuts by attrition.
Enjoy that Dead Sea Effect.
What I don't get about this is that presumably you'd lose more of the high performing employees that can find a better offer, and be left with people who can't afford to lose their job (no hate to them, these are human beings, but what I'm trying to point out is that the people who will quit will be the people with the most experience and other job prospects)
Seems counter-productive long term
Yes, this is a tactic used by lots of the large software companies when they want to raise the bottom lines, and phase out an aging workforce because saying the word "layoffs" affects share price. It also helps to reduce the salary demands of any incoming workers to replace the outgoing, because the baseline gets reset without having to justify why profits are high, but workers won't be getting any of that (previous position at 75% premium, but incoming at 25% less than scale).
An example with Google in 2021-2022: tell all your middle-managers they'll need to do something unreasonable like relocate to keep their job, wait for some to leave, then put the rest on PIPs and promise their underlings they can apply for the soon-to-be vacant role if they keep up the good work. Effectively, Google only had to publicly acknowledge firing 12,000 employees, when closer to 20,000 were displaced for various reasons. It's a shitty shell game to keep the share price high, and force people who stick around to do more work for less money.
No companies will always frame any negative situation as the employees fault. It's gasslighting 101
I just want to add that my brother had this happen today. He's a contractor at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and he asked his direct report whether they'll be renewing his contract next month. They said that they didn't know, because a high level manager who has never met him or likely seen any piece of his work is still assessing my brother's performance.
I pointed out that based on what he knows of the project and his role, he's fully qualified to answer this question: is it at all possible that they're invested in the success of the project, but think that letting him go and then starting a totally new contract hire search is going to make the project any less expensive or faster?
The answer is obvious. They might let him go because they lose interest in this wildly neglected project, but his performance is objectively nowhere near a level where replacing him would save time or money, and if they were serious this decision would've been made weeks ago. They clearly have no idea what they're doing next month and negging him while they try to figure out what the hell their goals are.
My company tanked last year and I ended up getting laid off, and as part of the process senior leadership owned the budget problems and in my layoff, I was given full pay for 16 weeks and uncontested unemployment (which I did not end up needing), as well as a job recommendation. Fortune 100 company.
Microsoft fucked up here and this manager memo is ridiculously stupid. This is how you hemorrhage the talent you're trying desperately to keep during budget shortfalls.
Companies aren't supervillains. They're just people, and people here fucked up.
Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn’t get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?
This is what you do if you want to encourage attrition.
They want to neg their employees, sounds like.
Every corp knows we're in late stage capitalism. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. Any individual that makes a billion dollars should be viewed as an enemy, even millionaires should be very nervous.
What - you can't even buy a nice two-bedroom condo here for a million dollars, I think you need to re-evaluate what a millionaire is today.
Buying a million dollar house and being a millionaire are two different things. Multi millionaires are part of the problem as well.
I took it to mean people who earn that much per year. The average person working a $30k+ job should have more than a million in the bank at retirement, and that should have been enough to retire on comfortably. Now I'm being told it's more than 1.5-2 million dollars at retirement.
You pretty much need to be a multimillionaire to retire these days and it's not that hard to do with a half decent job and basic retirement planning, especially when factoring in a home to your net worth (which is standard). Millionaires are not the enemy. $1m is 1000x closer to $0 than $1B.
The same late stage capitalism we've been in since the term was coined 175 years ago?
Later in the stage? The term was coined before the stage happened. End of WWI was supposedly the start and I don't think the idea was that it would implode the instance the stage was hit. We got a bit of a bounce back with the tech boom, that's clearly over. Unless another major frontier pops up that isn't immediately sucked dry by the already rich, we're at the end.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer Christopher Capossela told employees angry about the lack of salary raises that their best way to increase their pay is to make the stock go higher—after cashing out $4.4 million worth of stock.
Classy.
'unique opportunity for impact'
Impact can't pay my fucking debt
In other words “Leaked memo tells managers to lie”.
It’s not the lie that matters. It’s what the lie is.
I think most of us just assume lying is the standard from companies.
Fuck Microsoft and Fuck Satya Nadella
How did big tech companies got like these? Bigger cut for owners? I remember when a person got a job in Microsoft, Google, etc, it meant that they were financial stable in a good job that didn't drain all of their energy. We need tech more than ever now. Is it because there are so many devs these days? AI? All these things all together?
Free investor money ran out with the higher interest rates. The higher interest rates that were made to combat inflation, which again are mostly because of corporate greed.
Basically wages were going up, workers were getting a bigger slice of the pie against corporate profits - not that profits were dropping mind you, just not going up as fast as wages for a bit. So corporations as a block decided that the shock from supply chain distruptions means they get to raise prices. Somehow supply chain disruptions didn't show up on the bottom line though, so they got to make record profit, but we got record inflation. The gutted governments instead of taxing the windfall profits, because they can't do that because politics, were just watching as central banks increased interest rates that clobbered wages back.
It's just the system in action, when the 200 oligarchs holding the reins in America decide the workers of the "free world" have a bit too much, they crank up prices, which decreases wages even beyond the effect of said price increases.
This is capitalism working as intended.
Cunts. Same shit different day.
Rich get richer.
Literally carrot on a stick tactics
Men, many of you won't survive, but think of the glory! Hail Microsoft!!!!
"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down." - Captain Zap Brannigan
"Sorry, you're not getting a cost of living increase this year, but what you need to focus on is how impactful your work has been."
I kinda hate how it seems like programming will be at best a 30 per hour job in the future, likely leading to me needing two jobs. Its like I just graduated and I'm kinda frustrated with the state of this industry
I spent a bunch of time in the meat grinder.
Your bosses, and you'll have many, will be dumb. Your peers will have egos, and when they finally get a promotion (probably one that doesn't include a pay increase), they'll go out of their way to stifle any creative control you might have. By the time you burn out you'll probably find that your 20's are gone, you have no 'management' experience, and companies that are hiring are only looking for 'junior programmers with 10 years experience'. Then there's ChatGPT... which I've literally heard a manager, a guy that couldn't figure out how to open a PDF to save his life, say 'why do we need developers if ChatGPT can write code?' That's a whole new thing that's happening now that I'm not sticking around for.
I personally branched out of programming and got actual experience in Electrical Engineering, and am working on a business degree. Life is better now. I get to touch grass.
I'm telling you this, because after years of working in the industry I can tell you exactly why programmers get paid six figure salaries. You have to sit in one spot for 40-60 hours a week thinking about and solving puzzles that other people just don't want to. Few people can do this. I'm not kidding when I say I most of my coworkers have some kind of autism or an Adderall addiction. And your bosses won't appreciate what you do, because they simply won't understand it.
In a sincere desire to help you not make the mistakes I made, consider front-loading any additional education you might want. Don't put it off. Push back on working additional unpaid hours. Don't go in on weekends, or work additional hours. A promotion or pay raise only exists if you have it in your hand. The people at work aren't your friends, and you don't owe them anything. You deserve respect.
I don't mean to scare you off from the field. It has been highly rewarding, and I still love working with computers, but burnout is a very real thing.
All the above is great advice, but I just wanted to add one more thing.
Be absolutely sure you move from one company to another company every couple of years, otherwise your salary will not increase and will instead stagnate, while you burn out.
Not to be too harsh, but welcome to the life of pretty much every other 4 year degree professional.
Cost of college keeps going up, while salary and career prospects continue to decline.
Not to mention back to the office bullshit will sooner or later force me to move somewhere with a 10X cost of living.
I wish I could have lived long enough to see Micro$oft go bankrupt and dissolve. They have brought nothing but toxicity to the tech community, and I've been in this game for almost 4 decades.