Demoralising work culture at Microsoft Bangalore
Microsoft has become a sad place for me. I have no motivation for work. And the reason is promotion and rewards. Microsoft really wants a developer to limit innovations into the scope of fhl and hackathons. Any innovation done for product eventually means equal to any other task, there is no appreciation here. Saying that, I started in Microsoft doing all the tasks given to me. Delivered on everything that I took, and delivered before time. Picked up bugs whenever I completed my task of current sprint and solved them. Participated in hackathons and won in one. Took several brownbags, internal and in org. Then I did something that Microsoft encouraged me to do, innovate to solve a strong UI challenge. That solution doesn't exist on any application that I have seen, there are no libraries to solve that.(Trust me on this as the whole team researched). Then I picked up that task, made design solving current problems, created v2 where changed the design to solve scalability issues. The solution works but has some bugs. I spent considerable amount of time in doing that. I delivered it and delivered on other features then too. Worked hard and spend nights till 10pm for months. Worked even on some weekends. Then came promotion cycle. Where I didn't get promotion. BTW, I have already spent 2 years here as 61. Some of my colleagues did get that. And what did I get to hear from my manager: 1. I haven't delivered much. As the no. of my PRs is less when compared to others. 2. Lvl 61 needs to take more responsibilities. 3. The biggest feature I have done still has bugs. 4. The rewards in terms of money given to me is good and I shouldn't worry. 5. I haven't contributed in my team's success. Please suggest me guys - What have I done really wrong here in Microsoft? How does other people get promoted doing equal or less impactful work(I say this with confidence because I have seen them). The problem is I cannot figure out what went wrong. I need help as I am getting depressed whenever I think of office now. I get anxious when I think of work. I do not express myself now. I do not put opinions anymore. And I do not enjoy working. I am writing this one month after recent promotions happened. And I feel either this is not just or my personality doesn't sync with what Microsoft expects from an engineer.
Quit.
Quit there is no point fighting the politics at any organization.
Eh, so you got screwed over at promotion cycle... welcome to the club.
Clear politics. Just quit
Most people here are just gonna say vote with your feet. Go where you are valued. The rewards philosophy makes no sense to me. Why are we beholden to making other people successfil rather than focusing on the product. It's like failing the good kids, so that they can give company to the bad kids.
Given all that’s said is legit and to be taken at the face value, it sucks. Have you been chatting with some of senior engineers in your team or your manager where you could let them know of your contributions? Communication and exposure plays an important role when it comes to promotion
My manager knew my contributions well. Only senior in my team actually had differences with me because I took responsibility of a feature from him by proposing better design. Only communication gap that I didn't care about was with my skip level manager. That might have helped.
It’s politics, but also, it’s making sure the work you do is aligned with company/organizations business goals. You may need to sacrifice figuring out “hard technical problems” to figuring out “easier/less exciting problems that has direct (businesss) impact”
At google (SWE) I made sure I aligned with my manager to pick projects is very doable and made sure every project I did was “impactful” (as defined by the business, not me), and while that means working on less exciting things, it meant promotion. I’m personally fine with that mentality but if you’re not maybe Microsoft (larger corporations) isn’t the place For U?
You are right @sallie. Maybe I am not suited for big organisations. And my aspirations and passion doesn't always align with business directions.
I can provide an alternative view point. You should have regular discussions with your manager where you jointly agree on goals and timeframe. What you need to deliver to get to the next level. Right now, you seem to be in your own island defining what is a good deliverable, what work is more impactful etc. without cross checking with your peers/manager.
That's not fully correct. I had discussions with my manager. Yeah I told him clearly what I liked to do. And if it's important then I fully committed on doing that. Some setbacks, which were there from everyone at some point, made me target point for showing failure in the product. But then the question is, if the product was a failure, then how come other people got promotions, how come more budget flowed in, and how come more hiring was done? Still I did my best in making that feature work with as less bugs as possible. And that feature is something that you will see as the first thing when you launch that product. What about all the contributions I have done in past? What about getting a positive image for the team from leadership and Redmond with the features I delivered? Do they not count at all? I understand what you are saying, maybe I lacked little bit there, but I was not working on anything different from the product goals.
2 years is big time, considering your exp level, I will encourage you to leave, also do more leetcode in free time, in between switches, also if you are good in your technologies, it wont matter much career wise, focus on leetcode only.. Make faster switches in future, 2 years max in any company, 1 year is also okay
How many years you have been working for Walmart?
Then leave. Don’t talk about it just go. Do what needs to be done for you.
This