Nope, these are actual guidelines Microsoft uses to make hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. city41's comment is 100% accurate about how these things are used.

The entire list of 'competencies' is here: http://www.microsoft.com/education/competencies/allcompetenc...

It probably started as your typical big-company CYA in case someone tries to sue them for HR-related stuff and grew into this monster as some middle manager began empire-building.

There's even a wheel, in case you felt like making a poster: (pdf) http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/4/7/3477e49d-315d-4...

You need to think like a large-company HR director. Every employee must have an appropriate rank to justify his or her salary, and a list of qualifications to justify the rank, so that nobody can say “hey, this guy across the hall is doing exactly the same work as me, but I’m paid less, that’s not fair”.

All other things being equal, wouldn’t you rather have a manager or co-worker with a good sense of humor than one without? Therefore, don’t employees with good senses of humor deserve to be paid more than the humorless ones? If Microsoft doesn’t recognize and reward how employee-led humor adds value to their stakeholders, then all the employees with good senses of humor will bolt the company, attracted by the free clown suits that Google offers.

That's what she said.