- Microsoft is reportedly considering another round of layoffs next month.
- While the number of jobs at risk is unknown, reports suggest Microsoft will be cutting the number of managers in its employ.
- Low performing workers are also reportedly on the chopping block.
It’s not often discussed that Microsoft, Amazon, and other ‘very cool’ tech companies still practice this 80s firing the bottom 10% bull.. It has nothing with being a low performer, but everything to do with culling jobs indiscriminately and creating an in/out culture. Managers are forced to place employees into bottom performance slots, sometimes arbitrarily, so that teams/groups/departments fit the bell curve nicely. Then, people get fired, bonuses go out, and everything is peachy at the end of the fiscal yesr.
Let that stew for a few years and these behemoths are factories of pet projects and crunch culture. Your long-timers are either golden performers who’ve seen massive churn and project turbulance OR they’re climbers, willing to step on top of anyone or burn any project to climb the ladder or at least keep their spots.
Can confirm. Spent a few years at M$, almost got culled by the stacked ranking crap. I left before they could wreck my career.
Microsoft got rid of that in 2014 or so, when Nadella took over.
Sort of. Managers still get in a room and decide how the bonus pool should be distributed by ranking people.
Having a more aggressive manager is important for getting a better bonus.
I could see this factoring into layoff decisions.
Oh absolutely having an aggressive manager and skip will help you with bonuses and promotions. But they don’t force managers to give people low scores anymore.
While the management tool had a weird slider and score system (you could give a number between 0 and 1000 IIRC), the general terminology was you could get between 0 and 200, indicative of how you compared to the average person at your level. 100 meaning you did average per-say or completed about 100% of the work an average person could complete.
While not unheard of it was basically impossible to get 200% (required at least your skip/M2 and maybe your M3 to agree).
Last I heard (keep in mind this was 2023 or so) managers got around 105% or 110% of their bonus allocated for their team. Generally that meant you could give everyone “100” if you wanted, but practically it never worked out that way.
Also there were strict rules you couldn’t take from a more junior budget to give a more senior person a higher bonus. You could however take from a more senior budget and give it to a junior.
I. E. I couldn’t give two SWE1s 80 to give a SWE2 a 120. The reverse was allowed though.
Layoffs are generally done algorithmically. I’m not kidding. They don’t want to be sued. They follow all the legal rules otherwise (can’t layoff a US citizen without laying off a Visa employee first, etc).
Source: I worked there for 11 years, I was an IC but have many friends who are managers who would tell me how the system works, and have been laid off twice. The first time I found another position within MSFT but the most recent time, in December, I opted to take some time off and find something else.
Edit/addendum: when the managers get in the room for people discussions a lot of that is around promotions. Very little is bonuses. Bonuses are determined by your manager, then go up the chain. So your manager sets and signs off on your score. Then your M2 checks it and either sends it back if they don’t agree or signs off and sends it up. Then your M3. At the M3 and higher levels I suspect they don’t look too close but just make sure everything makes sense and the budgets balance.
Managers are latter. They don’t do much work or deliver any work that is critical to the company to operate. They are very good at corporate speak and climbing.
Explains well why all of their products are becoming shittier by the day.
Really happy I moved over to Linux.
At this rate we‘ll have fully automated companies going full slob by the end of the decade. Their customers? Probably also AI bots. If any.
Agentic AI bots “vibe coding” for other agentic AI bots, what could go wrong?
Just for funsies
For extra fun, the work they do doesn’t disappear, it just gets foisted on whomever remains. You get the benefit of doing your job and someone else’s with no pay increase
Because they don’t have enough money
