Sunday, August 23, 2009

Microsoft Annual Review 2009

Just a quick post: some of you enjoy posting information relevant to your review, both looking at numbers and a critical view of the message given to you. It has started to happen a bit in the last post so I'm just going to capitulate and put this small post up for the 2009 Annual Review share and compare.

Oh, and obviously grab yourself a few grains of salt. Folks seem to like this format:

  • L# (promo'd?)
  • (Exceeded|Achieved|Underperformed) / (20|70|10)
  • Bonus $K
  • Stock $K
  • (Promo $K)
  • Optional comments about Division / Group, discipline, impression of review

The promotion budget is significantly less this year meaning that if you got promoted you're really at the top of the heap. If you didn't, well, you're going into a long line.

And as we know: no merit raises this year (though you will get a raise if you're promoted). But bonus and stock awards are the same, ensuring we have the flexibility to reward our top performers.

I would expect that the Underperformed Microsofties have already been managed out. If you are an Achieved/10% then I'd expect you're given a very short term idea of what success looks like and can expect to be closely managed. Great time to update that resume and see what else is going on.

I found a bunch of old reviews of mine recently. Flipping through the review forms started with refreshing simplicity from over a decade ago, rapidly turning into confusing churn (company value ratings and all that crap), to now a fragmented collection of task-driven thoughts. While it's nice that the review form has pretty much stuck to the current form now and we don't have new components coming and going (yeah schema?) it really doesn't compare to the first couple of reviews I did at Microsoft.

Of course, I had great managers who knew how to give concise feedback, both daily and as part of my review. Where you don't have demonstrated collective excellence, you have process.


-- Comments

438 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 400 of 438   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

L61 Expecting promo at mid year.
E/20
15% bonus
275% stock awards

Is it better to get at full year review or mid year review or middle of that? Do you get any bonus/stock for mid year reviews? Or do they save it for full year? Or is that all separate?

Anonymous said...

How does gold star fit in the review. Does it implicilty mean this a way of rewarding outside of the review budget but consider this as part of your numbers.

Isnt gold star about rewarding for going above and beyond in accomplishing one task.

I got a gold start in the mid year and the numbers in the review was ok. When I asked about this, I was told "but you got a gold star".

What I like to know is that if this is common practise

Anonymous said...

For some historical perspective, I'll post last year's numbers and this years:

2008 Review
Position: PM
Level: 62
Commitment: Exceeded
Contribution: 70%
Merit: 4%
Bonus: 16%
Stock: $23K (125% of Target)
Promo: 0%
New Base Pay: $118K

2009 Review
Position: PM
Level: 62
Commitment: Achieved
Contribution: 70%
Merit: 0% (like everyone else)
Bonus: 8%
Stock: $19K (105% of Target)
Promo: 0%
Base Pay: $118K (unchanged)

What hurt for me this year was getting an "Achieved" for the first time ever vs. "Exceeded". Cut my bonus in half from last year. However I sort of expected this, as I stepped into a new role last year and had a steeper learning curve than I expected. I feel like my review was an accurate reflection of my performance for the year, and it motivates me to do better next year.

Anonymous said...

@L59-L60 promo with 2.5% raise, that's fine. The jump to 60 isn't a big deal, but what it does is put you in place to perform well enough to eventually challenge the next level band. Be happy that you're that much closer to 61 than your peers, and step it up a notch.

Congratulations on the promotion!

Anonymous said...

@"Is it better to get at full year review or mid year review or middle of that? Do you get any bonus/stock for mid year reviews? Or do they save it for full year? Or is that all separate?",

You must be a recent industry hire. If not, you are going to need to learn how things work around here. Why are you "expecting a promo mid-year" if you don't even know what happens at mid-year? Time to wake up and realize that promo's are not a "given", not necessarily going to happen every year, and so on.

Teams have a promotion budget. It will be split between out-of-band updates, mid-year, and year-end review, with a split up to the larger org's management chain, right. So, at mid-year, you'll talk about your "career", and some folks may get a promotion... but yeah Microsoft no longer has mid-year bonuses.

The good news is that you're already 61. So the real question is going to be "how am I going to get to that next level band... especially since I don't understand how the company works?"

Welcome to the company. Good luck playing the game.

Anonymous said...

RBI: $72K
CBI: $21K @ 15%

what is RBI and CBI?

Anonymous said...

> Did everyone who got promos get >5% except for the one other L59 above me?

I got promoted to L62 and got a 2% raise. That felt pretty small, but I did get a nice fat bonus and stock package so I can't complain. I think the promotions to odd levels may come with a bit more of a raise, since that goes along with a change in title.

Anonymous said...

It is fairly amusing that about 80% of the people posting are in the top 20%. Clearly not a representative sample...

As for me:

L61
A/70
8% bonus
100% stock

Anonymous said...

L61 .
E/70
12% bonus
120% stock awards

I heard if you are E that means you are in 20 bracket but I was surprised to see
E and 70 .. Is it something new this time .
PS : I joined MS in 2008 .

Anonymous said...

This is my first year at MS and I am not sure if these are good numbers.

Level 59 SDET
8% Bonus
85% Stock award
No Merit increase
No Promo

Anonymous said...


It is fairly amusing that about 80% of the people posting are in the top 20%. Clearly not a representative sample...


One of the reasons is that easy reviews are done first - managers need more time for more difficult ones.

Anonymous said...

> I got a gold start in the mid year and the numbers in the review was ok. When I asked about this, I was told "but you got a gold star".

> What I like to know is that if this is common practise

Gold Stars have no common meaning across the company. They're basically a way for your management to reward you.

Whether the reward is deserved, how it fits in to your annual perf review, who decided to give you an award, etc. these all vary per org.

I like to think the gold star I got for myself and the one I helped handout to junior folks in our org were because of extraordinary accomplishments.

I've also seen the award use simply for retention. e.g. let's give the guy a gold star so he thinks his org loves him. Cheapens everyone else's award in my opinion and I haven't looked at them the same on internal candidate's resume ever since.

Anonymous said...

L61 (no promo)
E 20%
B: 13%
S: 275%

Manager acted like it was the best review ever. Even my skip said it was amazing.
But I'm really unimpressed especially looking at the numbers here. Both said I was "promo ready" but I don't buy that the team could not spend $5k more to do right by me.

Anonymous said...

"Base Pay: $118K (unchanged)"

For level 62 that's a pretty good base pay package. Curious to know if you're in Redmond?

Anonymous said...

AFAIK, nothing happened to my manager even if I was able to demonstrate that he was laying and should not work for a company like MS. So I am really curios if anyone can tell me how this will affect him. I can only hope I destroyed his career as he was trying to do with mine.

Kudos to you on winning. My manager put outright LIES into his review comments for me last year. And if there can be a worst kind of lie for a manager to put in a review, it is this: he directly implied that some of the accomplishments I'd written into my review were lies by me. In one sentence, he indicated that I didn't accomplish very much, and I'm a dishonest liar to boot. Oppps, he's one of those non-technical managers who didn't realize source depot would keep stats that could be used to prove my veracity.

I complained to HR, and the most awkward, easily provable to the contrary, lies were removed, with no apology. The review score and compensation, far below what I feel I earned during a very productive year, stood. He is unscathed. I was part of the MS 1400 not so many months later.

My role was not eliminated as not key to the company's business, because there were 9 people in the division working in the same call center as I was, doing the same work, off the same queue. I was in the top 30% in terms of sat and productivity, although my manager endeavored to build a case to the contrary claiming that these numbers the division tracks for apparently no reason at all, are not productivity indicators.

The other 8 on the team are still employed. Including the team grouch brings down morale. Including the young foreign woman who callers frequently complain that they can't understand. Including the guy that works 10 to 4, because he chose to move his family to Seattle and you know that bridge commute is something you need to set your hours to avoid :), and has the low call-handling stats to prove it.

So still-employed FTEs, if you want to play the lottery, go ahead. It could be worth trying if you are A/10 or lower, seeing as MSFT has gotten more aggressive on culling perceived low performers. Just don't say after the fact that you weren't warned about what could result.

Maybe it's unusual in corporate America but I value my integrity and self respect at least as much as I value a paycheck. Employers come and go, but I have to live with myself for another 50 or 60 years. Even knowing what result I'd get, with my situation as a young single guy, I'd still play the scenario the same way.

Anonymous said...

Believe me: some people even deserved an underperformed, but that couldn't be done, or they would be walked out.


If you believe in Steve Ballmer's underlying philosophy of decimating the ranks every year, you should be walking them out of the door.


To Cull or Not to Cull Bottom Performers


So did Steve Ballmer in April 2006, who admitted to culling one in every 15 employees every year and suggested that all businesses, large and small, would benefit from such an approach.

Reshaping Microsoft's HR Agenda


Ballmer: And we didn't change everything, we changed some things. We still do rank. There are two things you can rank. You can tell people where they live. Are they amongst the bottom, middle, or top-of-the-stack rank of people who are in their peer group? And the other is you could force-rank. Was somebody's work in the last year A work, B work, or C work? We decided that we would not force-rank grades relative to how people did in the last year. If everybody actually deserved an A, let's give them all an A. If everybody deserves a C, let's give them all a C. So, we said, people's work stands for itself. So, that was force-ranked, and it is not force-ranked anymore.

But if we're picking baseball teams, we still want you to know if you are at the top, middle, or bottom of the draft order. We still pick, and that's got to be force-ranked or it has no meaning. So, we do the latter, and we don't do the former anymore.

Anonymous said...

"I got a gold start in the mid year and the numbers in the review was ok. When I asked about this, I was told "but you got a gold star".

Technically they are independent. The GS you received should not have impacted the numbers you got. In reality you need to understand that the managers have a limited pool of rewards. If you performed roughly equally to someone else on your team then it is reasonable for a manager to try and make the other person happy now. In the end, your manager has to try and keep the entire team happy and motivated. It's a delicate tightrope to walk.

Anonymous said...

This is my first year at MS and I am not sure if these are good numbers.

Level 59 SDET
8% Bonus
85% Stock award
No Merit increase
No Promo


They're okay. The 8% bonus is reasonable. The 85% stock is *slightly* on the worrisome side. On the one hand, it could be that if you joined the group part of the way through the year, the manager is using the stock pool to reward a super high performer. On the other hand, maybe he believes you have limited growh potential. Worth having a discussion with your manager about your growth prospects.

BTW, at L59, you want to aim for that L60 promo ASAP. If you've been at MS say 8 months, no big deal, but if it was a full year, you really need to understand what you have to do to get to L60 soon.

Anonymous said...

@"I heard if you are E that means you are in 20 bracket but I was surprised to see
E and 70 .. Is it something new this time .
PS : I joined MS in 2008 .",

Take the time to read all of the resources available to you on the HR website. It's all right there for you to read, instead of relying on a random public blog comment stream.

You'll find under the Compensation Philosphy section that these factors are decoupled: your performance against your commitments (U, A, E) and your contribution ranking / future potential.

You can in theory get a 10% Exceeded for instance, especially at some of the higher levels where a majority of folks are going to eventually hit the ceiling.

Anonymous said...

L63
A/70
12% bonus
80% stock

Unknown said...

L61
Underperformed/10
Zero Bonus
Zero Stock

How many days/months before MS brings down the axe?

Anonymous said...

This is my first year at MS and I am not sure if these are good numbers.

Level 59 SDET
8% Bonus
85% Stock award
No Merit increase
No Promo

Not worth calling home about.

Anonymous said...

L60
E/20
11% bonus
275% stock
MBD (Office)

What sucks is that my bonus got cut by a little over $4k from last year. Stock is nice but it takes way too long to see any of that. No merit obviously... so it's kind of a letdown compared to last year.

I've been here for 3 review cycles and always gotten an E/20 plus I have one gold star... so I'm really not sure what else I need to do to get to 61. The honchos must be putting the squeeze on our org.

That being said, in this economy, it's not that bad, and I'm quite thankful that I got what I got.

Anonymous said...

SDET somewhere in Windows.

60->61 (P)
4% raise
11% bonus
140% stock

Pretty good numbers, and promo was unexpected. I have a feeling bonus/stock might've been reduced slightly because of a GS last year, but maybe that's just me.

This makes 2 promos in 2.5 years... is that a good thing or a sign that I might soon be hitting a ceiling?

Anonymous said...

One of the reasons is that easy reviews are done first - managers need more time for more difficult ones.

Uh oh. My boss just scheduled my review meeting for 9/14.

Anonymous said...

L61 (no promo)
E 20%
B: 13%
S: 275%

Manager acted like it was the best review ever. Even my skip said it was amazing.
But I'm really unimpressed especially looking at the numbers here. Both said I was "promo ready" but I don't buy that the team could not spend $5k more to do right by me.


Ungrateful prick. Your rewards are near the top end. STFU, or strap on some balls and tell your boss and skip level that you think you deserve more. Let us know how that works out for you.

I guarantee you that there are coworkers that worked almost as hard as you, and landed near the top of the 70% bucket, and they got less than 50% of what you did.

Anonymous said...

"I did just that and after a few months I won. I got my review reversed and a second round review with my manager where he had to tell me my new scores and amend the review. So I am really curios if anyone can tell me how this will affect him."

I've heard of plenty of cases where someone was unhappy with their review, and cases where HR got involved and some of the manager comments were edited. But I have never heard of a case where scores were changed, that is extremely unusual. I would guess by the behavior that the manager was a low performer to begin with, and something like this quite possibly could put them in the underperform category. But I've seen people last in underperform status for years, so don't expect a firing.

Anonymous said...

L61->62
E/70
14% bonus
130% stock award
2% promo raise

Something seems out of whack with these numbers but I'll swallow the urge to dig deeper, take my promo and run.

Anonymous said...

A/10's should just leave. Frankly, there's better money to be made elsewhere (yes, even in this economy), and you can't do better than A/70 next year on a different team (ask a bunch of A/10 team-switchers about their experiences).

Or, I suppose, the review system could be uncannily good at judging performance, and workers are very consistent.

Anonymous said...

Got review today
L61 (promo to 62)
E/70
Stock 110%
Bonus 10%
Merit 2.5%
New Pay: 96K

Got screwed on the Merit bonus
Any idea how this will affect my comp ratio. I have seen a number of L60 and L61 make more than me in base pay.Manager said future pay increases will be good as my base pay is leaning towards the bottom end of the L62 pay range

Anonymous said...

L59->L60 promo
E/70
Bonus 8k
Stock 100% 6k
Promo 2.5%
Time in level 1 year

overall not bad i guess. was hoping for a little more of everything, but can't complain since i got the promotion first year on the job.

Anonymous said...

I am a L62 dev and I have done great work over the past year. I have technical results and papers to prove it and I was part of the Windows7 dev team. My manager ranked me an underperformed and has written false one-sided statements in my review. I would like to blow the whistle this time as I believe this is a personal and not based on technical performance. I have e-mail threads and documentation to prove my case. I plan on meeting my director and management chain. I don't care if I have to leave MS 'cos there are many better places and organizations. But I will not bow down to injustice and getting bullied my incompetent Microsoft managers.

Unknown said...

"RBI: $72K
CBI: $21K @ 15%

what is RBI and CBI?"

UBI, RBI and CBI or for the Services team.
RBI is for the sales side of the team and it's revenue based. UBI is utilization (billable hours with a 10% target comp) and CBI is commitments (10% target comp).

Anonymous said...

How much raise can one expect for a jump from L61 to L62 this year for SDET? Whats the median salary for L62 SDET?

Anonymous said...

I've been here for 3 review cycles and always gotten an E/20 plus I have one gold star... so I'm really not sure what else I need to do to get to 61. The honchos must be putting the squeeze on our org.

Leave Office as soon as you can. They skew rewards very heavily towards the top levels, so it is a career death trap if you are L63 and below. It is much easier to gain levels and scope outside.

Anonymous said...

Hey mini... we need a new post to discuss Netflix's culture. See the slides at www.netflix.com/jobs

It's the best read I've seen in a long time. I would love for our mgmt to read and respond.

Anonymous said...

L62
A/70
8% bonus
101% stock

Anonymous said...


I am a L62 dev and I have done great work over the past year. I have technical results and papers to prove it and I was part of the Windows7 dev team. My manager ranked me an underperformed and has written false one-sided statements in my review. I would like to blow the whistle this time as I believe this is a personal and not based on technical performance. I have e-mail threads and documentation to prove my case. I plan on meeting my director and management chain. I don't care if I have to leave MS 'cos there are many better places and organizations. But I will not bow down to injustice and getting bullied my incompetent Microsoft managers.


good luck

the best you can do is get some edits .. surprised your not fired yet.

Anonymous said...

My manager ranked me an underperformed and has written false one-sided statements in my review...I have e-mail threads and documentation to prove my case. I plan on meeting my director and management chain...But I will not bow down to injustice and getting bullied my incompetent Microsoft managers.
Good luck. Chances are the "management chain" already knows about you. This is typical of a "manage-out" process.

Anonymous said...

Just got my review. I'm a lvl 61 ten year employee with a solid review history and I got an underperformed/10. There was no warning this was coming. Our group had layoffs earlier this year and I heard through the grapevine that mgrs had to curve commitment ratings in addition to contribution ratings. The sucky thing is that I wasn't warned, so I wasn't able to avoid the damage. What's worse is that now I'm stuck in this group until I either pull up or get fired. Mgmt doesn't seen sincere about working with me to "fix" the "problems".

Same problem man :(
althougth I got A/10, does anybody know if I can apply to another group with that review?

Anonymous said...

"How much raise can one expect for a jump from L61 to L62 this year for SDET? Whats the median salary for L62 SDET?"

As per 3 year old numbers, mid-point for level 62 salary is $99k. I would add probably 5% more to make it in today's dollars (so 105k would be my guess for median salary of level 62).

There was a mini-msft post on the microsoft salary document. Search this on web - "mini-microsoft + microsoft compensation document" - it will point to mini msft post about the document. It contains an image of the 2006 compensation ranges for various levels. So you will get a pretty good idea about what to expect.

Anonymous said...

A/70
Bonus 4%
Stock 90%
Bonus seems to be very low. Does this mean i belong to some inner lower bracket?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous doesn't like his review rating this year and:
I plan on meeting my director and management chain. I don't care if I have to leave MS 'cos there are many better places and organizations. But I will not bow down to injustice and getting bullied my incompetent Microsoft managers.

Are you young? Cardinal rule for professionals: don't burn bridges.

It's dangerous to emphasize the "it's personal" angle. Traps, full of, it is, as Yoda would say. Keep the discussion in the frame of "manager comments were inaccurate, therefore the rating is inaccurate." Question the accuracy of the manager's ratings, not his or her motivation for them. The minute you point to a personality conflict, you're handing them the "he's difficult to work with" card, and by that I mean he=you, even if the difficult one is really the manager. They may pull that card out of the deck on their own, but you don't have to hand it to them.

You can even frame it in the context of a problem to be solved: "How can I ensure next year that my manager's comments accurately reflect the year I had?". If it's not your first review at Microsoft, you could add, "In previous years, under other managers, I've thought that my reviews accurately reflected my results, so this is a new one for me. This year, my manager and I regularly discussed my accomplishments in our 1:1's, and none of these things he's now citing as problems was ever mentioned."

Anonymous said...

L62 UX
A/70
11% bonus ($10K)
140% stock award

Great review according to my mgr but some seriously strong players to compete with in my team so i landed in the very top of the 70 group. Rising tide raises all ships....so i'm not complaining. Only wince is that from viewing the posts my fear that UX lands low on the pay and award scales are kind of confirmed.

Anonymous said...

L61 (no promo)
E 20%
B: 13%
S: 275%

Manager acted like it was the best review ever. Even my skip said it was amazing.
But I'm really unimpressed especially looking at the numbers here. Both said I was "promo ready" but I don't buy that the team could not spend $5k more to do right by me.

Ungrateful prick. Your rewards are near the top end. STFU, or strap on some balls and tell your boss and skip level that you think you deserve more. Let us know how that works out for you.

I guarantee you that there are coworkers that worked almost as hard as you, and landed near the top of the 70% bucket, and they got less than 50% of what you did.


Whoa easy there. How can people get so riled up on anonymous boards. You don't even know this guy or what he does.

OPs numbers don't even look so hot.

Anonymous said...

How much raise can one expect for a jump from L61 to L62 this year for SDET?

This is a bad year to get a promotion. A 2-3% raise would be pretty good based off other numbers I've seen.

Anonymous said...

To the guy who just got promoted to L62 with new base pay of $96K.

Congrats!

And yes, you are near the bottom of the L62 payscale. My info is probably a little out of date, but I figure your Comp ratio is about 0.88 on a scale of 0.83 to 1.16

Anonymous said...

"Base Pay: $118K (unchanged)"

For level 62 that's a pretty good base pay package. Curious to know if you're in Redmond?


Yes, in Redmond, but I didn't start here. Also aware that my base pay is probably higher than many L63s, I think my Comp ratio is about 1.09 which I attribute to being a L61 for over 5 years.

Anonymous said...

I got my review.

L62 PM
U/10
Zip Bonus
Zero% stock
Promo: Nada

My manager told me that I'm on the way out the door. It's not a surprise, as I basically painted myself into a corner. I specialized in a neccessary, but not interesting techology. This technology is still quite important to our customers, but is on the decline, and by the rules of stack ranking, I ended up at the bottom of the heap.

Microsoft is a competitive company, and I have no regrets at playing the game hard, but losing. I am a better person for having worked here, and I do truely belive that Microsoft has benefited from my work. I've worked long enough (and invested sensibly) so that I could take a year or two off and then return to work when the economy is hopefully more favorable.

My chain of command (lead, lead+. lead++) all appreciate my work, but they also all agree that my number is up, and I'm going to go after the 90 days.

Now, my ask for all those mini experts: what's the best way to leave?

The two choices in front of me are to QUIT or to let the performance process TERMINATE me. What are the PRO's and CON's of each path?

Anonymous said...

"So did Steve Ballmer in April 2006, who admitted to culling one in every 15 employees every year and suggested that all businesses, large and small, would benefit from such an approach."

Not to mention the benefit of culling a CEO who hasn't performed this year, or over the last nine.

Anonymous said...

"AFAIK, nothing happened to my manager even if I was able to demonstrate that he was laying and should not work for a company like MS. So I am really curios if anyone can tell me how this will affect him. I can only hope I destroyed his career as he was trying to do with mine."

If you're still working for him it's your career that is destroyed. You just haven't figured that out yet.

Anonymous said...

L61
A/10%
Bonus 4.5%
Stock 45%

This was my first year in this org (after many years at the company) and I got re-org twice during this review period.

I had 3 different managers on 3 vastly different teams with completely different committments each time within the past 10 months. I have nothing in writing - from any of the 3 leads - that I was not on track at any point during the year. I do have some highly visible "nice work" emails from some senior people.

The numbers don't bother me as I know lots of people got little or nothing this year. It is the "Limited" ranking that stings.

I am considering going to HR even though I know it's the kiss of death if I do. Since I clearly can't stay on this team with those numbers anyway I might as well, right?

Anonymous said...

What is Microsoft "manage out" process? I am new here..

Anonymous said...

L62
7% Bonus
120% Stock

This is my first year at MSFT. I am pretty happy with what I got.

Anonymous said...

althougth I got A/10, does anybody know if I can apply to another group with that review?

Another L61 A/10 here. Theoretically, we should be free to apply to other positions, but hiring managers will not even call you for informational with A/10.

I had one contact for position advertised as L63 (you know those groups who think that they need L67 leads and such). Hiring manager was OK guy, and I left good impression. I was being honest and told him about my review score (he would see it anyway if I would go through the loop). After few hours, he backed out and said that he cannot consider me for position.

I also had hiring manager being extremely enthusiastic about interviewing me, calling me to ask if he can schedule the loop. He even put HR person on Cc. Then, a week passes (probably he got my review to read) and nobody is scheduling my loop.

Worse over (or is it better?), we are in middle of reorg, so people who gave me A/10 are not in the group anymore.

Anonymous said...


A/70
Bonus 4%
Stock 90%


L61 A/10 here. Interestingly, I got better bonus than you -- 5%, but my stock is 50% of the target.

Anybody have an advice for A/10's?

I am considering two options:

a) Looking for rare hiring manager who can see past A/10 rank, hoping to get out of the group;

b) Stay put for several more months, work hard, with lot of written trail of achievements, then look around mid-year?

Are there people who got rescued from A/10 to better? My lead claims that it is entirely possible, and even I once went from 3.0 to mid-year promotion, to 4.0 next year.

Anonymous said...

L60
A/70
Bonus $6100
Stock 100% (equal to about as much as my bonus)
salary $88000

I compared to other SDET salary on http://www.salarylist.com

Mine base seems very low.. no merit really hurts

Anonymous said...

I've seen several references to "calibrated commitment ratings". It appears this was a company-wide shift. My group was more transparent about the review process, but no mention of this.

Are there others out there that can speak to this change in the review model, and how it has impacted your people?

Anonymous said...

It's amazing that no one in this company actually underperforms. It seems that everyone either does really well and gets a tidy bonus, does well and gets a mediocre bonus due to office politics, or is the victim of a selfish and incompetent manager that maliciously under-reports their directs' results.

Anonymous said...

A comment regarding my previous posting:

L59 PM
Exceeded/(none because CS do not have contribution ranking)
Bonus - TBD
Stock: None (CS do not have stock)
Promo: None
Group: SMSG
Merit: None (obviously)
Salary: $43,000

Way to grow! :)


It is important to note that I do work in subsidiary (Russia) not in US thus a salary is quiet different from US salaries.

Anonymous said...


L61 (no promo)
E 20%
B: 13%
S: 275%

Manager acted like it was the best review ever. Even my skip said it was amazing.
But I'm really unimpressed especially looking at the numbers here. Both said I was "promo ready" but I don't buy that the team could not spend $5k more to do right by me.


This is an amazing review. You're probably getting the wrong impression since the folks with good reviews are the ones posting thus far. As someone said above, managers save the mediocre reviews for the end.

Anonymous said...

Based on these numbers, it looks like salaries really differ in the same level.

Does anyone have the ranges for Lvl 60, Lvl 62, and Lvl 63?

Also interesting:
MSFT Stock Prediction

Anonymous said...

Rating : U/70
Stock : 75%
UBI : 15%
Bonus : 0

I recently(6 months back) moved job functions from a product group to a field role. I was/am on one engagement that is gong very well. But as a team we are overstaffed by more than 30% and our management is trying to work out the situation. Surprisingly, there weren't any layoffs during Waves 1 & 2.

Due to the fact that I was on a single project thats not yet over, i didn't have data for most of the commitments. So technically, this can be classified as a Underperformed (But my utilization was above 100% and I got a pretty good UBI bonus.)

My manager said between the time i accepted the offer and the time I joined things got terrible and they deliberated a lot about whether or not they are going to honor the offer. He also said, he had to pick between cancelling my offer(or laying off shortly after joining) or settling for a bad review and this was the best he was able to do. Apparently, the ratings weren't this way when they sent the numbers up, but HR(and SLT) scrubbed it.

During the discussion about the performance, he asserted the scores don't reflect my performance and he actually was disappointed that the numbers had to be that way. He asked me to just get over this review as a one-off bad instance thingy and keep doing the good things i have been doing. He also agreed to write the subjective review comments along the lines that there was no data but he was sure i would have done well had i got more opportunities. oh, and also he clearly said there are no job threats due to this.

My manager so far has been a genuine person and most of what he said fits logically with my observations over the last 6 months. At the end of the discussion he asked to take a couple of days off, think through this and get back to him next week with any questions I might have.

My questions are -
1) How common\uncommon is a U/70?
2) How do hiring managers look at a U/70?
3) Do the things my manager has told me seem valid?

Anonymous said...

FOR THOSE GETTING 10% THIS YEAR - DO NOT QUIT

I repeat, do not quit. This is the first year that I've seen the 10% given to employees that have no history of poor performance. If you've never received a 10% before, and you're manager has been telling you you're doing a great job THEY HAVE NO GROUNDS TO FIRE YOU.

As much as Microsoft loves to say you can be let go at any time, I am here to tell you it simply is not true. Microsoft is still bound by employment laws. Microsoft must undergo "meaningful performance management" before they fire anyone in a protected class. One review is not "meaningful performance management".

Demand that your manager tell you the plan for "meaningful performance management" and make them stick with that plan. If your manager does not do this that person can be held liable for your wrongful termination (along with Microsoft, of course).

Microsoft really got itself into a pickle this time. Its borderline illegal review system only worked when there was some previous history with "trouble" employees. But after the layoffs all the trouble has been shown the door. So now the "cut 10%" ethic is starting to apply to perfectly normal employees. These people have a PERFECTLY GOOD CASE FOR WRONGFUL TERMINATION.

This is why I say don't quit. Microsoft CANNOT fire you without cause. If anyone is actually fired during this review cycle they should join the class action being pursued in California against the company. Search for Microsoft Age Discrimination Class Action suit. You'll see it once it's filed as a private attorney general action.

http://www.privateattorneygeneral.com/

c said...

L62->L63, MBD
E/20
15% bonus
175% stock


Some random advice:
* Promotions are quite uncommon with less than 18 months in level. 2 years is the normal minimum for most folks in most groups.
* Exceeded/Achieved/Underperformed: This tracks how well you are performing at your current level. Think of it like a stack rank that takes into account your level.
* 20/70/10: This tracks how well you are performing relative to your whole team. Think of this like a stack rank that ignores level. Especially in the lower levels, E/70 is a good review.
* Leads/Managers are generally unable to give a straight answer to "How do I get promoted?" unless you have a glaring flaw that has specifically held you back. If they answer that, and you do it, they'll be in trouble if they can't deliver that promotion, and they know they can't be 100% certain they can get it for you.
* Instead, make the question more answerable: "What does it mean to be a [level+1 or CSP+1] on this team? In the org in general?" Ask about ways to get the opportunities to demonstrate some of those skills they describe.


In general, a CSP1 (59-60 for dev/test/pm) is expected to do good work on their features, and to be making themselves better.

A CSP2 (61-62) is expected to own larger things, and helps their feature crew become better. This includes helping out the rest of your FC when they're struggling, and helping compensate for issues to make sure the features stay on track.

A Senior CSP (63-64) is generally working on either broad or deep areas, and helps their entire team get better. At principle, you should be helping to improve the org. Etc.

Now, this doesn't mean you should be going off to do a bunch of unimportant visibility-raising initiatives. It means you should be looking for opportunities to help out.

Is your PM struggling to write a spec you think is good enough? Sit down and do a walkthrough of the area, and go through a spec after implementation has started and talk about the places that were really spot-on and the places where the spec turned out to be insufficient, and talk about why. Help him get better.

Is your dev having trouble with the feature? Talk about the parts that are troubling. Look for opportunities to simplify the design. If the problem is a lack of domain knowledge, find a teammember who has more skill there and suggest they mentor up. Learn more about it yourself.

Is the team struggling with performance, accessibility, security? Offer to help out - join the vteam, or offer to help lead one. Yes, it will take more of your time and it might be crappy work. Maybe it's an opportunity to offload some of your work that you didn't like anyway. It'll raise your visibility in a good way. Just don't try to ride in with an "I'll save you!" attitude.


Dang, that got more soapboxy than I expected.

Anonymous said...

My manager said between the time i accepted the offer and the time I joined things got terrible and they deliberated a lot about whether or not they are going to honor the offer. He also said, he had to pick between cancelling my offer(or laying off shortly after joining) or settling for a bad review and this was the best he was able to do.
..
3) Do the things my manager has told me seem valid?

No. He's trying to save his behind. To put it simply he is lying. He just told you he had to lie in the review, and you bought that !? Your manager is a coward. Get out of that group as soon as you can but the U/70 would make it difficult in the eyes of other hiring mgrs. Just look outside MS, forget about working for that type of a$$h*les. And this is just unbelieavable: he had to pick between cancelling my offer(or laying off shortly after joining) or settling for a bad review
So he settled for a bad review ! What a low life. This speaks volumes about the quality of managers at MS.

Anonymous said...

I am considering going to HR even though I know it's the kiss of death if I do. Since I clearly can't stay on this team with those numbers anyway I might as well, right?
Don't go to HR. HR only exists to protect the interests of the company, not yours. See them as if they had the plague, you are never near one of them.
Find a job in some other group or another company.

Anonymous said...

The two choices in front of me are to QUIT or to let the performance process TERMINATE me. What are the PRO's and CON's of each path?
Quit, Now, Today. Don't let these idiots humiliate you (more than they have already, judging by the tone of your comment). Take the time off you are planning as soon as you quit.

Anonymous said...

I can hear the sound of Microsofty egos being bruised...oh, so many of them.

Anonymous said...

L60
A/70
Bonus $6100
Stock 100% (equal to about as much as my bonus)
salary $88000

I compared to other SDET salary on http://www.salarylist.com

Mine base seems very low.. no merit really hurts


88k is pretty good for a L60! Go to glassdoor.com for more accurate numbers :)

Anonymous said...

So what about that next round of layoffs that was supposed to happen 9/2? It's midmorning and I haven't heard a peep on here, or from friends in a variety of teams, or the grapevine in my own org (one of the big two).

I suppose it's proof yet again that trolls pop in here every once in a while to throw a random date in, to spook some people...

Anonymous said...

Seems that the good reviews are indeed released first.

L62
A/70
Bonus $7000 (7%)
Stock $15000 (85%)
Promo None
Windows COSD

The review text states that my only problem, literally, was that I was too much ahead of the rest.

Time to search for new jobs out of MS, it's unacceptable to be ranked lower because I was ahead of the pack.

Anonymous said...

"My manager so far has been a genuine person"

It doesn't sound like it to me. A manager who tells you that they wanted to give you a good review but couldn't is trying to have their cake and eat it too. He could've gone to bat for you, didn't, and now wants you to like him for it?

Anonymous said...

"It's amazing that no one in this company actually underperforms. It seems that everyone either does really well and gets a tidy bonus, does well and gets a mediocre bonus due to office politics, or is the victim of a selfish and incompetent manager that maliciously under-reports their directs' results."

lmfao

Anonymous said...

I got my position terminated before the review. I knew they were going to weed me out during my mid year review. It is sad that no matter what, they always have to have 1 individual as an underperformer...this is why MS is always hiring.
Just reading from the comments on the review process, it is no wonder they do Morale events right before it. But no matter how much you do, getting a review that is unfair or they have to rank one person low and you are it is never good for the morale. From personal experience, it is killer to ones confidence (in yourself, manager and the company)

Anonymous said...

no new from india yet?

Anonymous said...

Well, I got my A/70 with some lousy numbers. So, I think I'm going to switch to "do-nothing" mode for the next year. I mean, what's the point?

WOW--as a stockholder I'm appalled at this and many other similar posts. If you are so unhappy about working there, have the balls to leave! SteveB, hope you are reading this...Maybe the stocks will finally start improving if MSFT gets rid of these types of employees!

Anonymous said...

I've seen several references to "calibrated commitment ratings". It appears this was a company-wide shift. My group was more transparent about the review process, but no mention of this.

Are there others out there that can speak to this change in the review model, and how it has impacted your people?


So, your group wasn't transparent at all. Microsoft could get a class-action lawsuit if it is proven that commitments ratings were calibrated. That would be an admission that the company is cheating people out of their deserved bonuses. The company cannot admit that.

Anonymous said...

L63 PM
E/70
Bonus $16,700 (%15)
Stock $27,300 (130%)

Promoted last cycle and on track for promo at mid-year

Anonymous said...

“I've heard of plenty of cases where someone was unhappy with their review, and cases where HR got involved and some of the manager comments were edited. But I have never heard of a case where scores were changed, that is extremely unusual. I would guess by the behavior that the manager was a low performer to begin with, and something like this quite possibly could put them in the underperform category. But I've seen people last in underperform status for years, so don't expect a firing.”

Actually, quite the opposite. This person has had an amazing career at MS, at least until this issue, that is why I am asking.


“If you're still working for him it's your career that is destroyed. You just haven't figured that out yet.”

That was the best part, knowing I was leaving when this person was trying to do me over after the review was changed. Priceless

Anonymous said...

Hi y'all,

Kevin Turner here. And thank YOU for all that you do every gosh darned day!

But down to business. All of you got what you dee-served on your reviews. No whinin' now! My SMSG differentiation tests for performance rewards provide the backbone that supports the soft underbelly of Microsoft. BTW sorry for the mixed metaphor. But remember in these tough economic times, mediocrity cannot hide! Unless you're the CEO (sorry SteveB)in which case you can hide all you like. But murder will out as Shakespeare said. Not that we all that much cared for Shakespeare at WallMart, except in the discount aisles.

So be advised that you need to be:
- non-mediocre
- open and fucking respectful
- an ass kissing PPT bitch

And you are good to go!

Thanks you for all that you DO, whatever the fuck that is exactly.

KT

Anonymous said...

I thought someone said Sept. 2 would be the announcement of new layoffs? Sadly, Mini has gone from being a very reliable source of lay-offs to FUD as of late.

Anonymous said...

My questions are -
1) How common\uncommon is a U/70?
2) How do hiring managers look at a U/70?
3) Do the things my manager has told me seem valid?


1. There is a curve that must be fit for both committment and contribution ranking. That curve is roughly 10/70/20. To be clear, I want you to understand this: as a manager, at the beginning of the review period I am literally told X number of people need to get underperformed, Y achieved, Z exceeded. Actually I'm not even told this because an excel spreadsheet ("the model") calculates it for me. Now I can't say for sure this curve ratio is company-wide, but I have never heard otherwise in my discussions with managers from other divisions.
2) Of course they look at underperformed. A good explaination and backup from your lead can undo it, but if you were a hiring manager would you be recommending to your team to bring in underperformers? Also, I don't have the HR guide in front of me right now but I think it even explicitly states you can't transfer teams if you have underperformed.
3. Yes they are valid. The curve exists and unless your org is carefully tuned then people are going to get shafted in some manner. A good lead will try to fight for you, but the bottom line is you must fit the review model. Your manager isn't deceiving you, he is most likely being forced to shaft you. At least he's being open about his dissapointment because in review training they tell you to make your feedback match the review scores, even if the review scores were screwed up by the curve. Anyway, this year I wasn't forced into underperforming anyone, but I had to take away a 20% to fit the budget and take away an Exceeded I thought someone deserved because we only had so many to go around.

W00t, management. Remember when I could just come to work and code all day...

Anonymous said...


Anybody have an advice for A/10's?

I am considering two options:

a) Looking for rare hiring manager who can see past A/10 rank, hoping to get out of the group;


not likely to happen, this has to go up to battling GM level for consideration ..

the "soft" message from HR is to keep A10s where they are.

I hope you can find a manager who can battle this delimna for you. My boss jacked me with a U10 and a door before I got my chance out. The incompetant fellow is still in charge ... some of his directs now report as peers ... he has some life left but since he is a principle LPM (a demoted GPM) he has some teeth left but i think his silver bullets / cat lives are running out. Mario wake up please.

Thanks MSD

Anonymous said...

Got my numbers today.

Promo 61 -> 62
Exceeded/20%
Merit increase: 5%
New base: 100K
Stock: 150% of L62
Bonus: 15%

Looking at others who were promoted, I feel that stock award is not that great. But no worries, I have a very good manager who recognized my work and promoted me to next level.

Anonymous said...

L60 -> 61
E/70
Bonus 14%
Stock 120%
Promo: 2.5%

Overall I am happy with the review. Marginal promo increase has brought me pretty much bottom of the level 61 salary band.

Anonymous said...

Rating : U/70
Stock : 75%
UBI : 15%
Bonus : 0

My manager said between the time i accepted the offer and the time I joined things got terrible and they deliberated a lot about whether or not they are going to honor the offer. He also said, he had to pick between cancelling my offer(or laying off shortly after joining) or settling for a bad review and this was the best he was able to do. Apparently, the ratings weren't this way when they sent the numbers up, but HR(and SLT) scrubbed it.

During the discussion about the performance, he asserted the scores don't reflect my performance and he actually was disappointed that the numbers had to be that way. He asked me to just get over this review as a one-off bad instance thingy and keep doing the good things i have been doing. He also agreed to write the subjective review comments along the lines that there was no data but he was sure i would have done well had i got more opportunities. oh, and also he clearly said there are no job threats due to this.

My manager so far has been a genuine person and most of what he said fits logically with my observations over the last 6 months. At the end of the discussion he asked to take a couple of days off, think through this and get back to him next week with any questions I might have.


Jeeze, I know I won't be the only reply here but I just can't help it.

Your manager is an idiot. He didn't have to give you an Underperform, or if he did then he has no influence on your review. He also lacks integrity - he should have cancelled your offer and told you why. There is NO trade-off to be made between making an offer and getting an Underperform.

Your organization is run by idiots. You don't give someone a U/70%. If you're Underperforming then you are not meeting level expectations and therefore you are automatically limited until you correct them. If you're a low-achieve, fine you can get a 70%. That's called a message. But this U/70% is just BS.

Your group is broken.

Anonymous said...

Zounds! The utter lack of career sophistication in some of these posts blows my mind, as does the bizarrely binary professional worldview a few of you possess. (Mind you, there's a few quite astute remarks among the chaff, but I'll let you figure those out for yourselves.) That said, lemme offer a few not-so-humble suggestions:

1) always, ALWAYS solicit peer feedback. If you are an honestly great employee, your peers and collaborators will recognize it and will be happy to sing your praises. There is no better defense than documented proof of your excellence external to your manager.

2) Track your commitments closely, and demand tracking information from your manager at your 1-1. Document it. If you are even slightly surprised come EoY, you screwed up, even if you think your manager is a lying snake.

3) Learn to sell yourself. This is not a dishonest act, as some of you like to characterize it; in fact, it is a fundamental part of a rockstar's professional acumen. This passive-aggressive attitude that the manager stack is expected to *discover* your brilliance is hilariously naive -- you are *competing* for attention with your peers, with your manager's peers, and with every other person he/she comes into contact during the day. It's not enough to show up and coyly expect rewards on account of you being you; you need to command your managers' very expensive attention.

4) Everyone *is* as smart as you, in the ways that matter -- this is business, not academia. You may make Dijkstra look like a mumbling slob when it comes to algorithm design, but the doofus next door who just rolled the crappy async code blocking you just made his boss' day because he had a good relationship with the doc team and was able to get a white paper published ahead of schedule. Don't fall into the trap of believing that the one thing you excel in makes you more credibly excellent than your peers, and that your manager values the same qualities you do. Look to your flaws, and see 1) and 3).

5) Take the soft skills training. You'd be amazed how much better you do when you understand the language of management. Don't scoff it it; *use* it. Even the ugliest, clumsiest tool has its purpose. Likewise, idealistic disputes over semantic trivia are a distraction, and endear you to no-one except the similarly alienated.

6) Look to what your peers do RIGHT, not where you feel they fail, and emulate or exceed THAT.

If this sounds a bit patronizing, well, it is. I have had bad managers and great ones, but I have always done well because I recognize insecurity and self-righteousness are the surest ways to scuttle a career; and that while science and math may be hard skills easily codified as algorithms and theorems, managing one's career is a very soft skill that requires strong personal awareness, astuteness, and assessment. If you think you do not need to develop these skills, you probably never had them in the first place, because you never stop developing and refactoring them. Wise up, and stop believing that work is simply the sum of what you punch into a keyboard, or the internal heat energy of your flaring synapses. Work is *people*, for good or ill. Make it for good.

Anonymous said...

L61 18 months into level
A/70
8% bonus
80% stock awards

Sweated a lot over the year but didn't have enough time for type A activities/work. A wasted year. I figure it is time I looked for positions in another group now?

Anonymous said...

To this guy:

....My manager told me that I'm on the way out the door. It's not a surprise, as I basically painted myself into a corner. I specialized in a neccessary, but not interesting techology. This technology is still quite important to our customers, but is on the decline, and by the rules of stack ranking, I ended up at the bottom of the heap.....

Your question was whether to bail or let the process run it's course. I think based on how you're commenting on your management chain and the role you've played that you should start advocating for a third option re: layoffs, along with it's respective payouts.

First of all don't go telling your manager or management chain how great your savings or investments are. You need to be needy here.

Have a heart to heart with your manager if you're on good terms and put it forward the way you did here and maybe play up the part about how you chose to help the customer with this specialization as you understood the SLTs mantra to require - 'delight the customer', 'CPE', etc, etc. Then go ahead and tell them that you now recognize the irony of the fact you were sowing your own seeds of destruction. Then you need to start the hard stuff.

1. Ensure they know you know that they didn't for xx years inform you of this while you were toiling away.
2. Ensure they know how much you're struggling like everyone else and don't want special treatment, exception cases, etc, etc - just like you've demonstrated re: old tech focus.
3. Ask your manager to ask their manager up the foodchain if they couldn't assist you in getting a soft landing.
4. Consider talking to the $$ burdens of these days.
5. Ask how you can help and how you can make it easy for them.

These guys are human and if they like you as a person and teamate there are opportunities for discretion. Who know, you might even help out one of your execs if you do this right. You could set them up to raise their hands to 'take a HC hit on behalf of the org'. They look good and you get paid off.

MS isn't all manage by numbers or we wouldn't need all these managers. And for every nut job manager there are many other good, honest and focused ones trying to do right. So set the stage for a win win.

Good luck.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous received U/70:
Due to the fact that I was on a single project thats not yet over, i didn't have data for most of the commitments. So technically, this can be classified as a Underperformed

The path to review success begins with writing commitments you know you can achieve, NOT just the commitments your manager tells you he wants you to have. What kind of discussions did you have when you entered your new role, about what you were expected to accomplish? Did you expect to have "data for most of the commitments" by now? If you did, why don't you have it now? Learn from that. Think of discussing your commitments for the next year with your manager as a chance to work on your negotiating skills, and set yourself up for success. Even if your manager gives you a list and says, "These are it," no, they're not. If you don't reasonably expect you can achieve them, caveat the hell out of them, identifying the external risk factors. Break a single big commitment up into a few smaller milestones. That's why our big projects have milestones y know, so we can claim something we've done.

Been here a while and I have not heard of the "newbie underachieved" being the new equivalent of the sacrificial "newbie 3.0". On one hand, I'm tempted to not believe it. On the other hand, strange twists and turns have occurred in the review process this year, such as some orgs forcing U/A/E to a curve, which was never supposed to happen. If that's what your org did, see if you can confirm that with your manager, and just include a statement in your review that explains the year's unusual circumstances. If I hadn't heard rumors of the curved U, I'd be inclined to dismiss any internal applicant with one, but now.... the orgs that did that have made it more difficult for everyone else to weed out the people who don't belong. Thanks. NOT.

Newbie 3.0 didn't hurt me years ago. Advice that was given me that year by colleagues: just don't get another one next year. I didn't. It has not been mentioned since.

Anonymous said...

Nominations for best-of-mini 2009:

Anonymous - September 02, 2009 9:10:00 PM
Anonymous - September 02, 2009 10:06:00 PM

The above offer useful hints on how to play career ball with the big boys. It's the use of tactics like these that separate the professionals from the amateurs.

Mini, have you ever thought of writing an article about, "What every company newbie should know about how to handle a career at Microsoft"?

Anonymous said...

U/70 OP here...

>>He didn't have to give you an Underperform, or if he did then he has no influence on your review
I knew even (before the review) that the scores were being overridden 3 levels above my manager. A curve has been mandated for both commitments and contribution ranking. They are either prepping up for the third round or really want to cut down on the bonus payout or both.

>>Your group is broken.
Yes, it is. In fact its so broken that, in spite of being heavily overstaffed for this year's budget and H2 last FY they have not yet done anything about it. Everyone in the team knows things can't go on forever but no one(including first level managers) know what and when to expect drastic changes.

>>>The path to review success begins with writing commitments you know you can achieve, NOT just the commitments your manager tells you he wants you to have
I work in the field. Everyone gets the *same* commitments. Only some target numbers differ. Apart from some number changes, we copy from a master document and put it in the performance site.

>>>He just told you he had to lie in the review, and you bought that !
I wouldn't have if i had not known the kind of maneuvering that's happening 2-3 levels above me. Another thing is that, there was absolutely no need for him to say this. He knows he could have just given me a U/10 and there would have been nothing i can do. I am 6 months in this group thats going through a terrible phase. He has been around for about 4-5 years now and people don't seem unhappy with him.

>>>and just include a statement in your review that explains the year's unusual circumstances
Yes. He has agreed to do that. His comments are not yet in the document in the performance site and would be done in a couple of days.

Anonymous said...

You should never quit unless it is to start a new job. Otherwise you are giving up unemployment benefits, severence, etc, and it may turn out that your manager is just too lazy to do all the paperwork to really get rid of you. In most cases, you get severence in exchange for signing something promising not to sue for wrongful dismissal.

From the company's perspective, they *love* people to quit before they need to lay them off. It's much cheaper that way.

Anonymous said...

My numbers:
L62 for 2 years now (no promo)
A/20
10% bonus
270% stocks

Strange result. I was expecting a promo but a lower stock award % than what I got.

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, layoffs are not done. SMSP just announced their cuts yesterday.

Anonymous said...

From what my manager told me, after the last layoffs, which hit my org hard, they recalibrated and many people who were E/20 went to E/70, E/70 went to A/70, A/10 went to U/10, etc. They essentially redid the curve relative to who was left, regardless of the fact that the people laid off in May were around for the majority of FY09 and you should still be judged relative to them, especially if they were chosen for layoffs due to performance issues, which was the case for a couple of the people I know that were laid off.

Anonymous said...

"Seems like there are a ton of relatively happy outcomes in these comments. My story is a bit different. Despite having one of my most productive years at MS, despite getting a promo last year for doing far less, this is the tale of this year's review, the worst of my 9+ year career at MS"

Sounds like you just learned a valuable lesson, more hard work != a better review around here. In my org, promos and good reviews are about visibility, not what you've actually done to help customers or the company's bottom line. All of my top reviews have come in my least productive years. Sad, but true.

Anonymous said...

To this Person who posted this item:
L61
A/10%
Bonus 4.5%
Stock 45%

This was my first year in this org (after many years at the company) and I got re-org twice during this review period.

I had 3 different managers on 3 vastly different teams with completely different committments each time within the past 10 months. I have nothing in writing - from any of the 3 leads - that I was not on track at any point during the year. I do have some highly visible "nice work" emails from some senior people.
----------
Your story sounds uniquely similar to someone I knew who had a similar situation - many managers in a short period of time. She did go to HR and did get her 10 turned into a 70. Don't stop at 'no' with the first HR level, and hold onto those visible comments you have. Write up everything you heard when you plead your case and ask to meet with your GM/Director of HR. The "10" is like a Scarlett Letter at MS. Your stuck in your role until next year if you can hopefully move that up to a 70. Management commonly refers to "Ten-Percenters" and it is an ugly place to be, as your work will be suspect and never seen positively, speaking from someone who has seen it happen to several people. Your situation can be changed. It will take some work but you have a case.

Anonymous said...

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 7:43:00PM My chain of command (lead, lead+. lead++) all appreciate my work, but they also all agree that my number is up, and I'm going to go after the 90 days...what's the best way to leave?

The two choices in front of me are to QUIT or to let the performance process TERMINATE me. What are the PRO's and CON's of each path?
-------------
Given you might be in the next RIF Group, which is rumored to be here ~October, I'd hang in there and await severance. Go about your job normally - they may think you've accepted your fate and relax around you. Keep an ear to the ground and if any disciminatory actions/verbal comments towards you happen in the period between now and when they escort you out the door, note them and take those behaviours to the proper authorities. I don't see any upside in just quitting, unless you're leaving for a new job or they give you some sort of special package ahead of time. Net, hang in there for a month which may turn into three (two months of it job free)+ benefits, and then you can go on unemployment for 26+ weeks. If you up and quit, you neither get the package and cannot claim unemployment, except in some extenuating circumstances.

Anonymous said...

L61->L62 SMSG
E/20
11% raise
15% bonus
175% stock awards
99K new base pay, probably low for a L62

I think I should be grateful to get this during such a hard year.

Anonymous said...

L63
A/70
5% bonus
75% stock award

Was told that manager fought to make sure I didn't get 10%. WTF!?!?!?! 2 Weeks on team because entire old team was RIF'd, glowing transition review from past manager, been kicking ass on new team, nothing negative in either review.

If I had taken severance, I would have gotten an 8% bonus. Kicking myself for not leaving MS. If you get a severance package, TAKE IT!

Any way to get an exception on 18 months to interview? I doubt I can last 12 months without this bile affecting my performance.

Most past reviews were E/20 or E/70's, looks like I just got hit by "new guy" review. Great motivation there.

Anonymous said...

2008
59->60
E/70

2009 (new team after reorg)
A/10
bonus: 4%
stock: 50%

my manager always says, that i am doing good job, then give me 10%.

My resume is ready.

Anonymous said...

Hello all my friends,

KT gas-baggin again for your enjoyment. Do not know for the life-a-me why they don't call me Brian. I mean mah name is Brian Kevin fucking Turner. Strike the middle part - I mean the 'fucking' thing - not family friendly, as we used to say back at Wal-fucking-Mart. And thank you for all you fucking do ... L59 guy lucky you got any stock BTW ... 30 shares was it. Don't spend it all in one place.
Y'all have to understand the whole thing about the haves and the have-nots. I have it and you don't. I don't care about you - I got a $5mill sign on bonus and you got nothing. Bwahahaha

Anonymous said...

When does the title change happen in the address book for the folks promoted to a new CSP band?

Anonymous said...

Future address book changes have been in Headtrax for a day now. Looks like 4-6% of a few groups sampled received visible address book title changes.

Anonymous said...

When does the title change happen in the address book for the folks promoted to a new CSP band?

Sometime after 9/15.

Anonymous said...

Could someone who was in Office and moved to other part of the company or is in Office and used to be somewhere else could comment how does the promotion velocity for folks with less than 10 years with company look like? It seems in office no matter how good you are you're getting promoted 18-24 months and the only difference between really good folks and those not so good is that those good will continue to get promoted past lvl 63. Is that a common theme across the company? Does being in top-level heavy org (search, winmo7) raises your chances for promotions compared to office of windows?

Anonymous said...

Microsoft really got itself into a pickle this time. Its borderline illegal review system only worked when there was some previous history with "trouble" employees. But after the layoffs all the trouble has been shown the door. So now the "cut 10%" ethic is starting to apply to perfectly normal employees. These people have a PERFECTLY GOOD CASE FOR WRONGFUL TERMINATION.

Uhhh, just one thing, buddy. A good portion who were shown the door in the layoffs had no "previous history" of being "trouble", other than perhaps a most recent review from a new manager that didn't like them and gave them the first A/10 or U/10 of the their career. Sound, hey, just like 2009 to you? This isn't the first year undeserved poor review have been given out. The people who got them in 2008 were the first of the people at Microsoft who really had to pay for them, just like those in 2009 might have to.

And a lot of the true 10%ers got left around when 10%er managers instead used the layoffs improperly in 2009. In some cases, those laid off were the real 20% of the team, with more potential than the 10% manager reviewing and laying them off.

The people they left? The woman who interrupts work to complain about her pains and aches, and who's so shy that she's afraid to express herself in meetings. The H1B who is a PM writing marketing white papers, but since he cannot write English with correct grammar, everything he writes has to go to the content writing team for massive editing, with time wasting back and forth about "what did you mean when you said this-garbled-English on page 32?". Followed by at least one engineer reviewing the paper to ensure that in translation to full English, it didn't become inaccurate. Then there's a supposedly experienced dev who took a full year to learn his job, constantly asking his teammates to review every 2-line change to code before he checked it in for more than a year, couldn't remember sd commands, doesn't understand things until the 7th time they're explained to him, who not only barely contributes but pulls down the performance of the whole team. When people reached their limit and refused to audit his performance of job for him under the table to help him not look like the failure he is, he complained to management, who turned around and complained at the team for not helping him, so they continue to do so at risk of being considered problems themselves. That's just on one product feature team of about 10. Other teams likely have their own examples of low-potential, low-performing employees who should have been culled for the good of the team, but were not, instead of the likely illegal culls that took place.

If you can believe MS practices age discrimination, don't believe that that and other kinds of discrimination were not involved in the layoffs and what came before them, too. There's a reason some people didn't sign the severance agreement.

Anonymous said...

When does the title change happen in the address book for the folks promoted to a new CSP band?

Not necessarily automatic, depends on if your admin is on top of things. You can do it yourself in Headtrax if you are that eager to see the change. It's a free form field so within reason you can have it say just about anything you want.

Anonymous said...

L62 (promo mid year)
E/20
Bonus 20%
Stock 300%

Anonymous said...

Great review according to my mgr but some seriously strong players to compete with in my team so i landed in the very top of the 70 group. Rising tide raises all ships....so i'm not complaining. Only wince is that from viewing the posts my fear that UX lands low on the pay and award scales are kind of confirmed.

Definitely confirmed. My UX team's comp ratios hover around the .85 - .9 mark, with no one (from what I've heard) above .92, despite tons of experience on the team.

I find it hard to get really riled up about it (we're all doing pretty well compared to the rest of the world, right?), but I know my team gets constantly dinged in mspoll numbers for it and it's been noticed.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mini

Love your site. It is insinuated across industry that MSFT is not a gender equal opportunity employer. It would be great that next time that posters provide the following in order to see if there are differences between M vs. F:

- Gender
- Level # (promo'd?)
- Current Salary
- Compa Ratio
- E/A/U and 20/70/10
- Bonus $k
- Stock $k
- Promo $k
- Division / Group

Anonymous said...

Competent women who have the ability to get stuff done do really well at the company in engineering. A lot of really Senior SDE devs, etc. Massive velocity, too.

However, quiet women who are unable to speak up in meetings or present their own opinions seem to struggle IMO. They need to be able to own the room of type-A asshats.

Also, I've been on a few teams where randomly the entire female staff becomes pregnant... and eventually end up leaving to raise a child. So that's probably an issue, but one that isn't going to get solved when one wants to take care of their children instead of working on a career!

Anonymous said...

money really buys happiness right? it is so childish that people fight over these things. I am not saying rewards aren't important. But let's say you got great numbers, you worked really hard for them but you are also miserable. And then one day you come into work , get into a car accident on 405 and become paralyzied or dead, those rewards number would matter at that point? or You'd wish you'd spend more time with your family ?

Anonymous said...

L61 (10 months in role)
A/70
Bonus: 8%
Stock: 90%/~$9K
Salary: $102K
No promo

Anonymous said...

@"et into a car accident on 405 and become paralyzied or dead, those rewards number would matter at that point? or You'd wish you'd spend more time with your family ?",

Good news! According to http://hrweb/, a new policy went into effect, voted on by the board.

If you are killed or permanently disabled, and never able to work, all of your stock awards immediately vest!

Enjoy.

Anonymous said...

L61 (Promote to L62)
A/70
Bonus 10%
Stock Award 130%
Increase 3%

Besides promotion, numbers look much worse than before. Don't quite get the message here. A/70 suggests I might be in danger to be wiped out but promotion means the opposite way?

Anonymous said...

so how much a 'kiss of death' is an A/10? will hiring managers in other teams consider a 'professional in place' ? thanks

Anonymous said...

Online Business Group
L62
A/70
Bonus $10K
Stock 90%

Worked like a dog throughout the year and had great feedback from partners within and outside the org. Disappointed with the review especially because skip-level and manager couldn't accurately represent my performance in the calibration process. Both have a fundamental dislike for anything quant in an analytics heavy group. Skip-level thinks it is funny but makes stupid jokes based on ethnic stereotypes.

Anonymous said...

@"money really buys happiness right?"

It sure doesn't hurt though...

Anonymous said...

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/microsoft-to-lay-off-27-employees-in-redmond-and-bellevue.ars

Anonymous said...

SDET

L#61
A/70

Bonus 8%
Stock 110%

Windows

This was my 4th review at Microsoft. Reward wise and compared to what I've been reading here, I was very happy with this review.

I find the whole process confusing and mysterious. My manager wouldn't tell me where I stood compared to other people on the team. But I know that they ranked people. No suggestions on how to get to the E bucket next time, or get a promo (~2 years in level).

Anonymous said...

"Skip-level thinks it is funny but makes stupid jokes based on ethnic stereotypes."

Record them and send them to HR. Post on Youtube for better effect (jokes only, not confidential info).

This problem will solve itself.

Anonymous said...

Not necessarily automatic, depends on if your admin is on top of things. You can do it yourself in Headtrax if you are that eager to see the change. It's a free form field so within reason you can have it say just about anything you want.

No, you can't have just anything there. Some senior managers are mandating specific titles to increase transparency in everyone's level.

Anonymous said...

L64 U/10

Boss says I started out the year not showing enough leadership but that I'm doing a good job now, trending up, and don't need to worry about being put on a performance plan or losing my job.

However, it's really hard to believe him. I mean, these days I wouldn't even feel secure with an A/70. I would love to hear someone tell me it's possible to get a U/10, recover from it, and grow into a successful career.

I'm taking a hard look at what I need to do to be more successful, but wondering if my fate is sealed and perhaps I should be focusing on finding another job asap instead.

Advice anyone?

Anonymous said...

You can do it yourself in Headtrax if you are that eager to see the change. It's a free form field so within reason you can have it say just about anything you want.

Hmmm, tried HeadTrax but the Address book title field is not editable...

Anonymous said...

Interesting no partners claiming wild review results this year?

Anonymous said...

"Skip-level thinks it is funny but makes stupid jokes based on ethnic stereotypes."
Record them and send them to HR. Post on Youtube for better effect

NO. Don't record anything and don't even dare to contact HR. You will be put in a black list for being a whistle-blower and your countdown begins -- weeks or months before you are out. Companies don't like whistle blowers, so don't identify yourself as one. HR policies and manuals are for "ideal worlds", but this is the "real world" and they don't work the same way.

Anonymous said...

SDET L59 (2 years in position)
U/10
$0/0%/0

Bye!

This didn't surprise me at all. The test platform I inherited from my predecessor (who quit three months after I was hired- oh, he was my boss, and we didn't get a replacement for years) finally fell down around my feet (as I'd expected) mid-year, and it took months for me to get my boss to understand it needed to be rewritten. (It didn't help that he was telling me I needed to "sell" the rewrite to various nontechnical managers, who he then proceeded to give completely inaccurate information to.) So, naturally, I failed all my commitments because they were all based on keeping the tests working. The rewrite's not complete, although I cobbled the old tests together into working again.

Was it my fault? Absolutely. I should have ignored the bullshit about trying to sell it and just do it, because there was no other practical way forward. And I got massive burnout (leading to a breakdown with uncontrolable crying and puking) after just a few weeks of 60+hrs, and the stress before that led to more general burnout, before that.

My review comments were full of "he fixed this, but not in time" (all of them related to pulling out of the burnout), and a few rather amusing notes on refusing to do projects I could prove were mathematically impossible. (Not just in the time suggested, but theoretically, mathematically, we-need-an-AI-for-this inapproachable. How can I make the test platform tell the difference between a test failure and a deliberate code change if it's a "waste of time" to change the baselines?)

I'm screwed and I know it, so I'll just do my best to at least complete the rewrite so nobody has to deal with the atrocity that is the old test platform as a matter of professional pride, then move to some other job that's a better fit for my skills. This one was until my boss left.

BTW: My numbers from last year seem off:
L59 (1 yr in, first review)
A/70
3% bonus (~$4k)
40% stock

40% stock seems odd at a /70, even though it was obviously a low 70. (I got points off for "failing to advance the state of the tests" for the time where I had no boss and nobody took us seriously because I was the senior person on the team.)

Anonymous said...

"L61->L62 SMSG
E/20
11% raise
15% bonus
175% stock awards
99K new base pay, probably low for a L62

I think I should be grateful to get this during such a hard year."


You should be grateful for that in any year, for fucksake. What, pray tell, would you have expected in a good year? For them to double your salary?

It blows my mind that people can still be so out of touch in this economic climate.

Anonymous said...

L63 (SDE, no promo)
Exceeded / 20%
Bonus $18,000
Stock 200% ($42,000)
Salary $107,300

Anonymous said...

NO. Don't record anything and don't even dare to contact HR. You will be put in a black list for being a whistle-blower and your countdown begins -- weeks or months before you are out. Companies don't like whistle blowers, so don't identify yourself as one. HR policies and manuals are for "ideal worlds", but this is the "real world" and they don't work the same way.

They are legally required to prevent those sorts of jokes in the workplace. You cannot be punished for alerting HR to this. If you're really that worried, report it and post on youtube anonymously.

If the comments are bad enough, the person could be walked out of the building the same day. I've seen this happen before.

Anonymous said...

SDET
L61
Bonus: Good
Stock: Great
Grp: SQL MDS

Great year, got promo last year. manager is the biggest idiot you can find. All he does is talk about real estate and cars. If that idiot can became a manager, anybody can become VP, believe me. He can talk, that is pretty much it. I heard (partly seen as well) that he has never shipped a product completely. I dont work, but i bullshit, playing the game. My competetiors already left last year unable to withstand his bs. Trying to get a couple of level changes before the idiot is fired. Life is good :)

Anonymous said...

Principal SM
Below a little skewed:
Raise: 9 %
Bonus: 15%
Stock: 150%
Group: FSD


Easiest group to work. Too many leads/managers/princpals in the group. All work done by lower levels. Report to top level, more than half the days my manager is not there. Just have to act work the other half. Need a secondary job. any suggestions?

Anonymous said...

I would love to hear someone tell me it's possible to get a U/10, recover from it, and grow into a successful career.

It's possible. Two years ago, I got a U/10 a month after switching managers (to my skiplevel). My new boss believed in me, and gave me clear direction, a year later I was promoted (63-64). The next year (this year) I got promoted again (64-65).
While my situation is different from yours, if you can keep the feedback between you and your boss going, you can pull this off. On the other hand, U/10 is a clear message - I could see what was coming and had been working on moving positions for months before the U/10 review came. Had I not seen the path to a new, and productive role I would have left, and almost did anyway.
I'm happy in my new role, and demonstrably performing, but I still wonder sometimes if maybe I should've left - I suppose I still can.
If you and your manager have a good relationship, with two-way communication and clear expectations, you can be successful going forward.

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

coming for you.

Anonymous said...

We've lived through the lay-offs and those left standing are faced with the task of 'doing more with less'. But now commitment time is rolling around and my boss is requiring that I add "Regulate my Work/Life Balance, allowing me to be happy with the balance and success in both my Home Life and Work Life". So I have a hard commit to be more happy, and if I don't, I guess I under-preform! It would be funny if they weren't really serious.

Anonymous said...

L64
E/70
13% bonus
140% stocks

Anonymous said...

L60 > L61
MIL = 36+
A / 70
Promo = 4.5%
Bonus = 7.5%
Stock ~100%
New Base Salary ~$87,000

Anonymous said...


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/07/microbite_oops/

Are Office Web apps falling victim to corporate politics or is it problems in getting SharePoint 2010 - that Office Web apps will tap - to scale that are behind this delay?


Yes

Anonymous said...

a year later I was promoted (63-64). The next year (this year) I got promoted again (64-65).

Are you in MSN or Ad Center? How the heck do you get promoted so fast at these levels.

Anonymous said...

L60 (no promo)
Achieved / 10%
Bonus: 7%
0 stock

My manager clarified that the 10% wasn't because I didn't achieve my goals, but because my "career skills didn't advance."

Anonymous said...

L63
Achieved/70
$19,000.00 Bonus
98% stock ($21,000.00)
Promo Raise: None
Merit Raise: None
Salary: $121,175.00

Wonder if they are going to freeze merit raises this year too...

Anonymous said...

I've been at MSFT for 13 years and this was my worst review by far.

I fell into the Achieved/10% group because (as my manager explained it) the low-performers are all gone, and we aren't hiring anyone new, so the only people left for the 10% bucket are existing employees who are doing their jobs but aren't excelling. I'm fairly new to my current role (after a pretty big career change) and now I know what the underside of the bus looks like. I did receive a semi-decent bonus & stock, but I also feel like I got slapped in the face.

Since my job change, I've watched my once stellar options decrease gradually year to year, and this year I got half of what I got last year. I'll be updating my resume and going back to the role I was good at as soon as one opens up.

Anonymous said...

L64 - promoted, new salary $132k
Exceeded / 20
CBI Bonus $56k 44% BES
RBI Bonus $20k
Gold Club Bonus $6.6K
Stock $62,001 243.14% of target.
(Promo $4,557, 3.55%)

Job:
Sr. SharePoint TSP II

Anonymous said...

I hope some senior management in OFFICE reads this blog and is capable of thinking about the frustration of IC's when they compare themselves to peers in other division.

MINI WHY DONT YOU POST SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Anonymous said...

L60
A/10%
6% bonus
50% stock

In my one on one meeting with my manager throught the year he told me that I was doing a great job. He even talked about me being promoted. I was shocked when I saw that I was in the 10%.

Since I've been given a 10%, should I leave now? Will they let me go in six months? Will they fire me, or lay me off?

I have worked at MS for two years, and MS has paid for the legal fees for my green card. If I quit, do I have to pay for these fees?

Anonymous said...

>>>L60
...
In my one on one meeting with my manager throught the year he told me that I was doing a great job. He even talked about me being promoted. I was shocked when I saw that I was in the 10%.

...
I have worked at MS for two years, and MS has paid for the legal fees for my green card. If I quit, do I have to pay for these fees?
<<<

Not very different from what happened to me last year except I was in the low 70% after being 'on track' for a promo for about 6 months. I changed jobs internally right after the review. I wasn't asked to pay back any green card or work permit related fees.

Anonymous said...

Wow, lots of Es and lots of 20 percenters - you guy make me feel lame.

Level 62 Dev
A/70%
Bonus: 3%
Stock 80% (~14K)
Salary 103K (no change)

I envy your 10%+ bonuses, but I and some personal problems (death of good friend, two others attempting suicide) and had a bad first half of the year. My managers (reorg) recognized the uptick in the second half and commented on it (on my review). I have mostly been blessed with insightful and honest managers.

Anonymous said...

SDET II
L61 -> 62 (1.5 years in level)
E/70%
Promo raise: 2%
Bonus: 15%
Stock: 110%

Anonymous said...

L63 MCS
A70
8% CBI
19% UBI
120% stock
Changing org's at end of year probably cost me an E/20. Management said as much. Only so many available and understand wanting to use it for one staying. Overall no complaints and good comments.

Anonymous said...

I hope some senior management in OFFICE reads this blog and is capable of thinking about the frustration of IC's when they compare themselves to peers in other division.

MINI WHY DONT YOU POST SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?


I don't believe Mini has any personal experience with the Office org. Office has a compensation policy that is skewed heavily towards rewarding highly leveled employes, at the expense of the budgets for lower levels. It's a great place to be >63, it's a career deathtrap below. It's been that way for longer than I've been at MSFT and it's not going to change.

If you are good at what you do, you can do something: leave. You'll be under-leveled compared to your peers and will make rapid progress elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Wonder if they are going to freeze merit raises this year too...

I wonder if the freeze is permant, too. Narrowing the pot to bonus and stock awards would better line up with a "pay for performance" philosophy.

Anonymous said...

@"Wonder if they are going to freeze merit raises this year too...

I wonder if the freeze is permant, too. Narrowing the pot to bonus and stock awards would better line up with a "pay for performance" philosophy.",

Cut the pay for performance talk. That is NOT what we have. We have pay for performance on a scale that is designed for the lease possible increases.

Why do principal band engineers qualify for up to 40% their base as bonus? Partners, 60%? Come on. If we're really pay for performance, all engineers should be eligible for up to 60% their bonus.

Otherwise, there is SO LITTLE differentiation between low-achieve and exceeded performance that it is a joke for people who make the company make billions (E/20's).

Anonymous said...

L62 dev (stuck in this level for 18 months)
Achieved/70
bonus: 11%
stock:110%

I worked really hard. Almost every other weekend and late nights was very common. There was a reorg halfway in the year around April and our org changed directions. My new manager did not like any project I was working on and told me to abort all of them and work on new stuff.

Anyways , looking foward, do you think 70/A has any hope of getting other jobs within MS these days or hiring managers have thier pick of 20/E to choose from now?
I am 18 months into this level, will my clock start ticking in 6 monthts to move up or get out?

Anonymous said...

L62
E/20 (as last year)
Bonus 17% of pay (slightly more than last year)
stock 170% ($ amount is same as last year, but more shares of course)

expect a promo soon.

Mgr has all rave comments, and calls my passion "rare".

My career goal is to manage a virtual team of 20+ people, if I am still with the company. I have no desire of being a people manager for the sake of managing people, but am very passionate for virtual team as long as I can drive both technologies and businesses.

Anonymous said...

The assumption with these reviews is that managers are trained enough to give concise reviews?

the reality is they aren't, typically they are just individual contributors promoted fast and no expertise on what it takes to people manage.

So staff flounder thinking their manager has it together and in reality they are just being beaten into shape most times.

This is why we have a top-down mentality in Microsoft. Too many idiots above us and by the time you have a diamond in the rough, the politics or layers of stupidity has already began to weed them out.

There are some that rise to the surface, but realistically they've had to play dumb to get there (i.e. playing possum) - whilst secretly being the opposite.

Anonymous said...

L60 -> L61 (1 year in level)
E/20
Bonus: 16
Stock: 275%

Promo increase enough to put me at the low end of L61 range which I'm happy about.

Anonymous said...

Why do principal band engineers qualify for up to 40% their base as bonus? Partners, 60%? Come on. If we're really pay for performance, all engineers should be eligible for up to 60% their bonus.

+1 for this.

I also don't understand why the people that sell the products are eligible for much larger bonuses than the people making the products.

Let's steal a page from Google's playbook and look at rewarding people for larger group accomplishments. How about a $1k bonus to everyone in Office for every 10m copies of Office 2010 sold?

Award the bonus annually, and you can even subtract from the bonus for teams that had to release a hotfix.

Anonymous said...

"I am 18 months into this level, will my clock start ticking in 6 monthts to move up or get out?"

* likely in next 6 to 12 months you may stay with the company.

* not very likely L62 / A-70 to be forced out these days.

* level++ - I don't know.

Anonymous said...

L60
U/10

I think that says it all. I've never had a bad review here, and my lead admitted that not only did he not read my status reports, but he did not understand everything that was on my review even though we'd talked about it in person on many occasions. Lead did not clarify items not understood before stack ranking.

The weirdest part is the mixed message that they want me to stay and think I can do the job. Midpoint they raved about me. And in the review, I was told I was NOT a bottom performer. Gold star last year (I know it means nothing, but damn). And nailed all my committments (which management now claims weren't good, yet they wrote half of them and signed off on them...).

Already updated the resume; it's probably a matter of time, and in a way, I think it's time for a change. If this is what it takes to get me off my ass and find a better place, well, then my fault for waiting so damned long instead of taking my picture perfect review and promo from last year and moving on THEN.

Anonymous said...

L59
U/10
Bonus $0
Stock $0
CSS Developer Support (Issaquah, WA)

Admittedly, I had a slow first half, but I had a very strong second half. Manager said he fought for an Achieved with bonus and stock, but was overruled by upper management. First poor review in my six years with the company (and in total contrast to the 3.5s and 4.0s I used to get under the old system, along with three level bumps and individual awards).

I take responsibility for my low first-half performance, but it would have been nice to know that my second half achievements were recognized by the company. However, in a year where Microsoft has stripped away morale events and budgets and froze merit increases (even though we still profited in the billions), I'm not surprised.

Anonymous said...

A poster asked about gender.

Comment at Saturday, September 12, 2009 2:10:00 AM (U/10, lead didn't read status reports). Female. But I've never felt all that discriminated against because of my gender, to be honest. I'm pretty bullheaded and willing to jump in. I'm sure it's possible in some teams, however (one of the teams I work with seems to have pushed out a member based on her gender).

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one here with less than stellar numbers?

-L62 Dev
-E/70
-Bonus 9K
-Stock 20K
-Promo None
-Salary 97K

Years in MSFT - 7
Years in Level - 1.5

Anonymous said...

L61 SDET (1 yr in level)

E/20
12.5 % bonus
200% stock

Can't complain, very good review all around. Finally broke into the elusive 20% band and the stock showed it. Expected higher bonus (some L60's got almost 20%),but still very pleased.

I'm shocked that many people don't understand the review system and what a poor job some managers do at explaining it. In a nutshell, every team has the exact same amount of money (per person) for promos, bonus and stock, period.
Your commitment rating is determined by your performance against commitments and roughly determines your bonus (~10% is good for Achieved, not so good for Exceeded). Yes there is a sort of "curve" applied here, because we can't be all Exceeded (because nobody would be Exceeded), and shows poor calibration around commitments for the group.
Your contribution ranking (20-70-10) directly reflects your place in the stack for your level band. This is a curve, needs to be. Stock awards tell you where you are in each band. If you're at 100% of target, you're pretty much squarely in the middle or slightly below, if you're at 200% or above, you're at the top.

Anonymous said...

L63 PM
A/70
11% Bonus
130%
Promo: None
Merit: None
Salary: $95-100K
Location: Midwest

Anonymous said...

L59
U/10
Bonus $0
Stock $0
CSS Developer Support (Issaquah, WA)

Manager said he fought for an Achieved with bonus and stock, but was overruled by upper management.

First poor review in my six years with the company (and in total contrast to the 3.5s and 4.0s I used to get under the old system, along with three level bumps and individual awards).


If your manager told you that, then they suck. They either don't have the balls to fight for the right things with management, or they don't have the balls to tell you to your face that this is what they think of you. Either way, it's time to go. It doesn't sound like you got that message from this review.

Also, it's very hard to believe that you started at a L56 6 years ago. We haven't hired at under L59 in quite some time.

Anonymous said...

Why do principal band engineers qualify for up to 40% their base as bonus? Partners, 60%? Come on. If we're really pay for performance, all engineers should be eligible for up to 60% their bonus.

it's actually 44%. And it's very simple... as a leveel 65, I can leave Microsoft, take my ten years experience here and go somewhere else and make more. A level 59-62 engineer is a dime a dozen in the marketplace.

Over ten years and four promotions, I've learned a lot more than how to write code. I've learned about managing a business and I'm a damn good public speaker. In order to retain me and keep me productive, MSFT has to pony up more money in the form of pay for performance. I perform at a higher level with more experience, I expect MSFT to pay me better than they did when I started out as a junior person with no clue how to do anything than give a good demo and write some code.


I also don't understand why the people that sell the products are eligible for much larger bonuses than the people making the products.


This is a tougher one. As an engineer who works in sales as a TSP, It took a long time for me to accept that our sales people will typically make a lot more than I will.

However, the largest part of their compensation comes from their RBI compensation.

Let's look at CBI first - Commitment Based Incentive. Management and HR like us to think that if we exceed our commitments, we'll get an exceeded rating. Bullshit. We all know that's not the case and that our performance rating is determined in a calibration session and we're all stack ranked.

RBI, however, is about as objective as compensation gets. A sales person is given a (usually) difficult-to-obtain quota. They're selling the software, which is arguably a harder task than writing the software. (Have you ever tried to actually sell or deploy SharePoint in a diverse organization?)

If they are supposed to sell $2million in SharePoint and they sell $4 million, they have 200% attainment and will be rewarded appropriately.

AGain, same as above where I talked about how I can go somewhere else and make more - I'm very talented at what I do. If Microsoft wants to retain me, then they have to pony up and reward me. If they don't, I'll go to a competitor.

That's the way it is.

A person who can write code is worth X.

A person who can write code and has great interpersonal skills and can sell ice water to an eskimo is worth Y.

A person who is so good at selling ice water to an eskimo that they don't have to concern themselves with how ice is made is worth Z.

SDE, SDET, PFE = X

TSP, MCS = Y

Successful Salespeople = Z

Anonymous said...

As a leveel 65, I can leave Microsoft, take my ten years experience here and go somewhere else and make more. A level 59-62 engineer is a dime a dozen in the marketplace.


GTFO. You will not be missed. The lower level people are treated as the expendable ones, but they're the ones that do all of the work that you take credit for.

I've learned about managing a business and I'm a damn good public speaker. In order to retain me and keep me productive, MSFT has to pony up more money in the form of pay for performance. I perform at a higher level with more experience, I expect MSFT to pay me better than they did when I started out as a junior person with no clue how to do anything than give a good demo and write some code.


Ooooh, a good public speaker. That's great. And how well is our motivational speaker division doing these days?

You do not contribute to the bottom line. You probably don't even contribute to the slides that you are presenting to people. We are paying you 10x what you deserve for what you produce. There are too many people like you sending out too many random and conflicting visions for where you see various feature/product groups going.

Anonymous said...

"as a leveel 65, I can leave Microsoft, take my ten years experience here and go somewhere else and make more. A level 59-62 engineer is a dime a dozen in the marketplace."

You're forgetting to factor in the industry hires who were mishired at too low a level. There are a decent number of 61's and 62's in the company who, given your job responsibilities, would probably execute them capably based on already having been there and done that.

Someone I know was promoted to 64 last year, but had been a 62 for several years prior. Very senior in the industry. Knows his stuff, regularly puts his butt on the line for the company and gets things to work, and yes, he represents Microsoft in public quite well in situations that probably matter more to the company than most "public speaking" scenarios. No one would ever have guessed he was leveled so low if he didn't mention it periodically out of frustration with a leadership team who wouldn't ante up on the promos. Oh yeah, and he has 30 years experience.

You are not that special and can certainly be replaced by someone who'd cost the company less. Watch your back.

Anonymous said...

"What is the message that the company is sending to employees when someone that really exceeded expectations gets an achieved? Or worse, what is the message to someone that only achieved and gets an exceeded only because that person won't get a deserved promotion? Due to a small promotion budget, managers had to make political deals to somehow compensate some employees with minimal fairness. Yet, when the final review model came with calibrated commitment ratings, all hell broke loose. That is creating the mixed message that some are seeing in their reviews, where the written feedback doesn’t match the ratings this year. Believe me: some people even deserved an underperformed, but that couldn't be done, or they would be walked out. Instead of having someone that has the potential to improve getting a strong message and delivering next year, managers now have just to hope those people won't continue with the same borderline performance from the last year, or go through the painfully PIP."

+1 to this entire comment.

We drove the vast majority of our rewards this year to the top 5%, meaning that if you were at the very, very top of the 70% bucket (which usually means you started out in the 20% bucket before calibrations), you got totally screwed so a few shining superstars could get FOUR TIMES what the people who did almost the same level of work got.

Jesus fucking christ, SLT. How far down the toilet can you take our compensation strategy? I've never been Lisa's biggest fan, but this is beyond the pale. The woman is either totally whipped by Steve or she's just really that dumb.

Anonymous said...

2008 Review
Position: Dev
Level: 63
Commitment: Exceeded
Contribution: 20%
Merit: 5%
Bonus: $18K
Stock: $46K
Promo: No
New Base Pay: $125K

2008 Review
Position: Dev
Level: Promo to 64
Commitment: Exceeded
Contribution: 20%
Merit: <3%
Bonus: $21K
Stock: $52K
Promo: Yes
New Base Pay: $129K

Hopefully it's the economy, otherwise the 64 numbers are almost identical to the 63 ones.

I like my team and my manager, however after more than 2 years at MS in the same team, I am considering looking for something different within MS. I figure it's best to do this when everything is going well.

Anonymous said...

Typically how much time does it take to get promoted from 62 to 63? Has anyone got it in a year?

Anonymous said...

@"Typically how much time does it take to get promoted from 62 to 63? Has anyone got it in a year?",

Yes. Realize that there are plenty of folks often performing at L63 when they first receive their L62 promotions, so it is possible.

There's nothing typical about promotions between level bands, your experience will vary.

You can't just sit around and watch your "Months in level" increment on //hrweb/!

Business need has to exist, along with many other things. I've known 62s who have been at level "forever", and others with a high velocity.

Anonymous said...

Also, it's very hard to believe that you started at a L56 6 years ago. We haven't hired at under L59 in quite some time.

It may be hard to believe, but it's true. I had a lot of "blue-badge" friends before I joined Microsoft and when I was hired full time from my contract position, they laughed at my level, saying they didn't even know levels went that low.

When I was hired to my current role, it was a very, very difficult jump because, as you mentioned, there really isn't anything under L59 so any movement within the company was going to be a three-level jump (rarely considered, let alone approved). I count myself lucky in that regard.

Anonymous said...

L63 SDE in STB
was promoed mid-year from L62
A/70%
10% bonus
125% stock

Anonymous said...

L65
A/70
15% bonus
120% stock
Base Pay $146K

Complete disconnect between glowing written feedback (which would imply E/20 + promo) and numbers.

At least most of the damage done my previous bad skip level management has now worked its way out of the system, hopefully I can get some goodness out before the current bad skip level management inflicts too much damage.

Anonymous said...

L65
A/10
Bonus: 10%
Stocks: 45%
Salary: $146,600

This was my first bad review ever and I had no indication at mid-year or in 1:1's (except, in retrospect, manager cancelling many of them and being too busy to even be bothered with my review). The review said the low score reflected was due to working across many units, but obviously the score indicates I am not valued at all. The manager also said that A/10's are not being walked out and there is no indication they would be. I'm getting close to 50 and need a job, so if someone could recommend a good headhunter -- I'll relocate anywhere -- I would be grateful.

Anonymous said...

-L59 PM
-A/70
-Bonus 2.2K
-Stock 3.2K
-Promo None
-Salary 80K

Years in MSFT - 3
Years in Level - 3

Well, guess it's time to stop hanging on to thinking I can advance as a PM in Windows. Four bosses in a year. F***.

Anonymous said...

L60 PM
E/70
13% Bonus
125% stock

Been with the company about 1 yr now. I was told I was right on the boundary of 20/70.

Don't know what to make out of all this.

Anonymous said...

Level 64
Exceeded, 20
Bonus $22,000
Stock 300% ($76,000)
Base: $122k

Anonymous said...

PM in OMPS
L62 -> 63 (MSD/OMPS)
E/20
Bonus: 27% of BES
Stock: 242%
Promo: 9%

I had to walk over peers and people who had more merit delivery but this was about me this year.

I was a 62 for along time.
K

Anonymous said...

L60
A/70
8% bonus
80% stocks :(

Has anyone or do you know some one refused to accept the review???

I know someone who did... HR is involved now!!!..does this matter in future reviews???.., mgr got promoted this time...

Anonymous said...

"This was my first bad review ever"

a $14,600 bonus, A/10 + stock is not a bad review. $0 bonus, U/10 no stock is a bad review.

you don't get 10 by "working across many units" -- you get 10 because they think you won't be promoted for a long time (if ever)

and you're valued enough to keep paying you $146,000 / year ...

Anonymous said...


L65
A/10
Bonus: 10%
Stocks: 45%
Salary: $146,600

This was my first bad review ever and I had no indication at mid-year or in 1:1's (except, in retrospect, manager cancelling many of them and being too busy to even be bothered with my review). The review said the low score reflected was due to working across many units, but obviously the score indicates I am not valued at all. The manager also said that A/10's are not being walked out and there is no indication they would be. I'm getting close to 50 and need a job, so if someone could recommend a good headhunter


I had a very similar review and I'm also truning 50. Is age really a factor? At least to some managers?

Anonymous said...

This might be the more appropriate thread to post to: I am pretty sure that THIS YEAR'S REVIEW WERE THE NEXT ROUND OF LAYOFFS.

Now that all the reviews are in I can confirm that the 10% bucket in E&D was much, much bigger this year. About 20% of the people in my band got limited. This is how E&D hopes to layoff a bunch of employees without paying any severance.

And it's happening now. Limited employees are either being asked to leave or (in the case of employees that met all objectives and have no history of poor performance) are being told,"Everything's fine, but you do realize that you have no future here, right?"

It's the most evil kind of layoff I have ever seen. Just to save a couple bucks E&D is ruining the careers of excellent, achieving employees. By growing the limited bucket WITHOUT ADMITTING TO IT Microsoft is slandering the reputation of these employees. How is it slander? This year twice as many employees are walking around with a "limited", but hiring companies do not know that just about anyone can get a "limited" now. So if an employer asks for your last review, and you provide it, they will think you are a low performer.

I think this is a pretty horrible way to improve profitability. I don't know if other groups are laying off people in this back-handed manner, but I would like to know. Maybe mini could find out, just how widespread was the recalibration?

Anonymous said...


Has anyone or do you know some one refused to accept the review???

I know someone who did... HR is involved now!!!..does this matter in future reviews???.., mgr got promoted this time...


yes .. sign it even if you dont agree .. you can always add a rebuttal w/ some extra comments / data around your response.

HR is involved it is the beginning of the end.

Anonymous said...

From Anonymous:
So if an employer asks for your last review, and you provide it, they will think you are a low performer.

Say WHAT? I hope you meant "another team at MS" rather than "an employer", as in, one at some other company. My reviews are full of proprietary information that isn't another company's business.

Regarding review scores, if I had a bad year review-wise this year and was seeking to move to another company, I'd quote my LRA (lifetime review average) instead. Who they gonna verify it with? Microsoft HR won't say yea or nay, because they just verify employment. And if you use the manager who just gave you the rotten score as your reference, well-ah, guess you deserve the results you get.

If seeking to move internally and speaking with potential managers of other teams, I'd still quote the LRA. Then with a knowing sardonic expression, I'd mention my most recent review score, accompanied by offhand comments about the quality of my results vs the previous year and the fact that after N years at MS, it was inevitable that I'd eventually report to someone with who has a different view of my performance than that held by the other managers I've worked for here.

Don't get drawn into discussions of why they might have given you the rating, because not having been in the calibration meetings, you can't know why. Maybe the skip-level owed another manager a favor and you lost out during the lifeboat exercise because of it. Even if you know that something like the latter happened, it's not MS-politically-correct to acknowledge that those things go on, so STAY AWAY FROM IT. Keep the focus on (1) average over time, and (2) the objective worth of your quantitative results to your team. What you don't want a prospective manager to question is how well you play with others, and getting drawn into a debate about your manager's rating of you could make that an issue.

Anonymous said...

To the bloke who complained about a C/R at 1.0 after promotion and then no merit. Some of us promoted at midyear are closer to .90. That's where the lack of merit increase really stings.

HR, be wary of this group. You have folks moving up fast now being significantly behind in base salary of their slower moving peers. When the job market picks back up, these low ratio emps become flight risks.

It's not just about $.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone here know what is the typical duration for which someone can be at L62 and still be with the company? I know a person who is at that level for 5 years now and no signs of getting promoted this mycd too. Are his days counted?

Anonymous said...

I think this is a pretty horrible way to improve profitability. I don't know if other groups are laying off people in this back-handed manner, but I would like to know. Maybe mini could find out, just how widespread was the recalibration?

OHH ... so that's what's been happening. I joined as a L59 around 2 years ago in a big slow org . First review Sep 08 was okay A/upper - 70 , 130% stock ; following MidYr was fine and at the end of this yr i was struck by A/10 . Seems to be the case for some other folk too. Was also hit by a sudden re-org so don't know if that added to the problem. Anyways I had already made up my mind to switch to some othr company so i don't care a damn , just wanted to collect my bonus and run . Bonus was still okay-ish though 7% so I'm not too mad at them :)

Anonymous said...

I need some advice. Thanks in advance.

I am currently 18 months in my L60 SDET. My manager told me during the review that I am on track for the promo to L61. It seems like he shots for next September.

I am thinking about asking for a promo at Mid Year.

Any pros and cons of doing this? Add advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2009896852_microsoft19.html

Steve did well :)

Anonymous said...

I am thinking about asking for a promo at Mid Year.


Asking for a promo is not going to get you anywhere.

Do your best work, make sure that the chain of command knows about it, and hope there is budget for a promo next year.

Anonymous said...

Since Steve (and the other officers and presidents) got raises, I guess they technically aren't MS employees.

Back to my weekend job...

Anonymous said...

Oh yes! Thats where the money from our pay freeze goes exec compensation raise :)

Anonymous said...

well i got my U10 last week, i did not even get my review.

what is up with that.

Anonymous said...

I got a U10, 0 stock 0 bonus. But no signs or hints that my job is in jeapardy and halfway decent text in the review itself - mixed signals.

Doesn't U10/0/0 mean "hit the road"?

If I am let go soon - do they give me two weeks or two months (technically to find another job internally)? Have heard conflicting reports.

TBH - at this point I would not be unhappy about being let go.

Anonymous said...

I got an A/10. I am L 59 and joined 6 months back. Does that mean I have 6 more months? Are the 6 months counted right after the review got written Or right after the review was handed to me?

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