Why I left my PM role at Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

Why I left my PM role at Microsoft

medium.com

88 pointsPaulMest45 comments

Getting raises every year and a half for 9 years, making $250k at the end of those nine years, and then leaving to pursue your dreams (with the concomitant personal network, financial resources, and work experience) seems like a pretty sweet gig to me.

It was a nice post but the following is just a bit hard to reconcile in my head:

> "Start something new; change the world"

> "a friend who’s founded an awesome startup (JogsForDogs)"

and

"There has to be a better way to measure customer service ROI. We think we've found it."

There are varying degrees of changing the world, and not all have to have the aspirations of something like "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." If you're creating value by helping someone do their job better, or faster, or with less waste, etc, then you're still changing the world just in a relatively smaller way. Perhaps a better way to state it would be "making a change on the world". The startups that are upending entire industries (Uber, SpaceX etc) get the most attention, but there are significantly more focused on missions that may directly affect a lot less people, but still improve their lives in a meaningful way.

Why did the title change on HN to remove the money? The blog post still has the dollar amount in the title. Just curious, seems like a weird edit.

When someone leaves a position like this, and then attempts to re-enter the workforce a few years later, are they able to do so at around their old salary? Or have they lost the bargaining chip and must restart substantially lower?

Microsoft would hire someone like this back in a hot minute. For lower level Microsoft people who leave, they can come back at a higher level.

Microsoft needs great people. He will just have more experience in new and unique ways, so he will be more employable.

For Microsoft employees who hit a level and can't get higher, they can probably go to a startup for 2 years and come back at a higher level at Microsoft.

note to self: investigate potential opportunities at microsoft.

Does anybody at Microsoft know whether "PM" refers to "Product" or "Program/Project" manager? In either case, that sounded like a tough decision, although hopefully he built up a large enough personal runway that helped make the decision to strike out on his own easier.

From when I went to interview with MS, the PM role was Program Manager.

Not at Microsoft but know the company well (did contracting work for some teams).

PM refers to Project Manager as far as I know. But there are different levels of PM's within Microsoft. You can be a completely junior PM managing two really junior devs developing a simple feature. Or you can be a principal level PM and earn that amount of money. Just the term PM doesn't mean much.

This isn't correct for product development groups; things may be different in IT and MCS. In product groups, PM always means program manager and the role really isn't much about project management. PMs at Microsoft are engineers and subject to the same "I", II, Senior, Principal, Partner title hierarchy.

Thanks for clarifying that. And I indeed meant the title hierarchy you mentioned.

program manager.

PM means program manager at Microsoft for anyone in engineering. I honestly don't if Microsoft's product managers call themselves PMs or not behind closed doors.

A "PM" at Microsoft is a "Program Manager". This is a relatively vague term when it comes to responsibilities and deliverables and tends to vary from team to team. Generally, though, they will tend to be more customer facing than engineers - collecting information from the customers and creating a plan for the Engineers to execute.

While this might sound like the old Office Space gag that they "take the specs from the customers and bring them to the engineers", a good PM brings a lot of value to the team and - in the classical PM role - frees up the engineers to worry about implementation and less about what this message should say when this error happens.

But a great PM will come up with product strategy and just do whatever needs to be done to get the software out the door. Sometimes this means working closely with lawyers. Sometimes this means working closely with the security team. Sometimes this means writing code. Or making sure the marketing team is on the same page as the product team. Or that the sales team knows how to pitch this and has all the materials they need to present. Or presenting to customers at conferences.

Sometimes this means baking cupcakes for the team, just because.

It's a time consuming, unenviable position in a lot of ways. But it's also probably the position at Microsoft with the most ability to impact products that ship to customers.

(Disclaimer: Microsoftie.)

Great description, very spot on. I started to describe, then figured that this sums it up just right.

- Ex MSFT PM

Thanks for sharing. This echoes some of my thoughts before some recent changes I made and is a good read for everyone to provoke some thinking about goals, work/life balance, and of course, money.

Just realized how much I hate the term "change the world" that is so prevalent in start up culture these days.

I suppose "World" could mean whatever you want it to mean though.

That is allot of money to leave behind. However, if you can be happier doing something else for less money than go for it.

Because now I have enough money to do whatever I want?

Yeah this guy mentions having a goal to save enough to not need to work for 2 years.

That seems fairly unambitious at that salary. If I were in his shoes I'd like to think I would stick it out a few more years and be able to just retire early and work on side projects for fun.

is a quarter million even a lot anymore?

Yes, it's quite a lot.

It is a lot when the median salary is $52K for the rest of your countrymen.

Average household income for Redmond is < $100,000. Median is probably a lot lower. So yeah, it's enough to feel like you've "made it".

Mean is over $100k now: according to the 2012 American Community Survey estimate [1], mean household income in Redmond is $112k, and median is $96k. Redmond is an unusually wealthy suburb, though. The median household income for Seattle is $63k.

[1] There doesn't seem to be a way to link the table directly, but you can search at http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtm... and then click "Income" on the left.

The world is not only USA, where I live it's a LOT,

and then, there's Africa

Even in the US, for almost everyone, it's a lot. Bubbles within bubbles.

you're getting a little more down-modded than you should, in my opinion (though it would help to make this more than a one-liner).

250K out here in SF still buys you a nice life, especially if it is a one-income family. If it's a dual-income, full time family with two kids?

The median price of a 3br house in SF is around 1mil, maybe a little higher. Full time daycare is about 25k a year per kid, really, this isn't an exaggeration. So a 5k per month mortgage and about 4k a month in childcare - and because the two-income family is "high income", they lose out on most tax breaks for the childcare expenses. Reality is, you're a lot better off financially with one huge wage earner and one stay at home parent.

250k a year is still a nice salary, and many people who have it 1) don't have kids, and 2) got into the housing market a while ago, and carry a much smaller mortgage (their property taxes are much, much lower, too).

But for a two income family new to the housing market, with two small kids? 250k keeps you safely in the middle class, but you'll be limited in where you can live (outer-ish sunset or south of 280 are probably your best housing options).

I'll play the 1% size violin

More like 2%

Sorry to ruin your joke...but that salary wouldn't land you in the 1%.

400k/yr does though

I don't really see this as particularly constructive. 250K a year is a lot to be certain but, it's hardly "1%" pay. If you work hard and join a large company like MSFT, Google, Apple, etc. you have potential to make this. It's not that uncommon in the software development world.

Besides, why the violin? He isn't bemoaning his decision. He seem happy about it. He may be speaking to all the young recent graduates that are gunning for a role like his. I enjoyed the post.

> If you work hard and join a large company like MSFT, Google, Apple, etc. you have potential to make this. It's not that uncommon in the software development world.

First, yes it is pretty uncommon in the software development world, because a small number of software engineers work for these companies in areas with pay like that.

Second, the software development world is pretty small in the overall employment picture, so the people who work for those companies at that salary are a small minority of a small minority.

> 250K a year is a lot to be certain but, it's hardly "1%" pay

You're right, it's only 1.5% pay. He'd have to make $350K to crack the 1%: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States#...

Of course, those income figures are household income levels, so if he lives with a spouse/partner/significant other who makes $100K or more, they're in.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/02/01/rich-o-meter-20/

Maybe 30th percentile, in 2004.

do you know the difference between net worth and income?

That is NET worth not annual income. $250k is a very high annual income, and very few people attain this working for someone else. Most people bringing in that amount or higher are running a company.

That's net worth, not income. This is income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

That salary is not quite top-1%, but it is at least top 3%.

This is also household income, not personal income. Last I checked, the 1% mark for a single guy was roughly $192K/year, and for a household it was about $388K. If his spouse makes an equal amount, he could very well be in the 1%.

This is net household value, not salary - it's safe to assume if his salary was ~$250k his household value was significantly larger.

In 2010, that salary would have put him somewhere between the top 5% - 1%: http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-in...

That's wealth. 1% income is $388K. Average wage income of people at the 99th percentile is relevant here, also. To assume that 100% of this person's income is coming from wages is probably a wrong assumption, esp. in this market.

Plus he mentions in the article (technically, in a comment) that his quarter-million figure includes insurance, 401k, discounted ESPP, and stock (which has a 1-year vest). It's not at all unbelievable that his actual salary could be as "low" as $150k.

I'm surprised how literally people are interpreting 1%.

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