Microsoft plans unprecedented boost in employee compensation, simpler reviews | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft plans unprecedented boost in employee compensation, simpler reviews

geekwire.com

22 pointschubot12 comments

You realize this is from April, right? The review period is nearly done, and most employees should be seeing the results by September 15th.

(disclaimer: I used to work at MS until very recently)

From April. HN's de-duping system seems to be broken. Identical URL posted as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2590862.

At least from this example it doesn't seem broken.

Zero up votes and zero comments submissions from 50 days ago shouldn't count as duplicates...

All this bureaucracy sounds terrible... people focus on gaming the system rather than doing their actual job.

I also wonder why Ballmer has to use all this corporate-speak:

"For all employees, we will shift a portion of stock award targets into base salary, providing more cash up front and obvious incremental employee value."

"obvious incremental employee value"? Huh? Ballmer actually seems like he is a person (if an odd one); it's funny that their communication has to be so neutered.

I just left a company where the performance evaluation system was (IMHO) overly complex and didn't encourage good work. I wouldn't say people game the system, but the complexity allowed promotions and compensation to be adjusted willy-nilly based on seemingly arbitrary lines, making the entire exercise more political than meritocratic.

When your process is essentially one big black box, it's similar to having no process at all, and what you get is tribal fiefdoms.

> "Ballmer actually seems like he is a person (if an odd one); it's funny that their communication has to be so neutered."

One thing I've noticed about modern corporations - they all try to sound as soulless and inhuman as possible, but it seems like this is mostly based on a misguided impression that "everyone writes copy like this" as opposed to any logical strategy or reason.

On the other hand, there's the flip side - the ubiquitous startup that tries to sound like your best buddy. There's a fine line to be walked.

(Disclaimer: MS Employee) I don't think that the majority of people focus on gaming the system - the best way to game the system is still by doing awesome work.

No, the best way to game the system is to suck up to your manager and tear down the work of the people in the peer group you're being compared with. I worked there for about 8 years and saw a large number of people doing both of these ...

Disclaimer: MS is a big company.

I don't see this attitude in my group at all. Not saying it doesn't exist elsewhere, but people are extremely generous with sharing credit/praise, and people overall are pretty good at standing up and publicly admitting errors.

I'm sorry you worked in a sucky group. Hope it's better where you are now.

Very true, and I didn't mean to tar all groups with the same brush. There are plenty of great teams at MS which avoid these dynamics. However there are also plenty of people gaming the system and I think if you look at Microsoft's overall lack of success -- and the number of passionate creative people who have left -- "the curve" and how it's applied have a lot to do with it.

That's too bad.

I didn't see this at my time with Microsoft. Though to be fair, I was on the windows kernel team, a team that's been together for a long time and doesn't have any infighting at all.

> I also wonder why Ballmer has to use all this corporate-speak: "For all employees, we will shift a portion of stock award targets into base salary, providing more cash up front and obvious incremental employee value."

What is "corporate-speak" about that sentence? It seems pretty straight forward and accurateness describes what they are trying to do.

I don't know what "obvious incremental employee value" means. I know what "cash up front" means.

It sounds like a verbal tic. He could have just said, "For all employees, we will shift a portion of stock award targets into base salary, providing more cash up front".

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