How's working at Microsoft w. a family post-Nadella?
I'm a 7 year Amazonian contemplating a move to Microsoft for three primary reasons: better benefits & work-life balance without a total comp hit. My current organization has a reputation for not being a place where you can have a family and a successful career, but that feels true for most of Amazon. My team has been hemorrhaging good performers to Google and MSFT for the last 12 months, mostly to Cloud Platform and Azure, and they're trying to convince me to join them. The perks at Google are nice, but not important and designed to keep you at work as long as possible. I have an infant and a wife that also works full-time, so I'm not really considering Google. (Note: Not interested in hearing from jaded MSFT lifers, or former MSFTies who left before the stack-ranking annual review process changed. Your opinions are valid, but probably not helpful.)
😂😂😂😂😂😂 He said “workS full-time” though
Google, particularly Seattle/Kirkland office has very good wlb
Stack ranking is not gone. Meetings still happen, peoples names still pushed to get top rewards. Anyone average, no they are not ranked.
“Not interested in hearing from jaded MSFT lifers, or former MSFTies who left before the stack-ranking annual review process changed. “ This reads like you’re interested solely in positive experiences. Probably not the best approach.
I've seen enough circle jerks where these folks feel compelled to come out of the woodwork to share their (usually overwhelmingly negative) experiences. As I said, their opinions are valid for their experience, but not helpful if they left before Nadella's culture change picked up steam, or just want to talk about how much better/worse it is than when they started 25 years ago. Nostalgia has zero value in this context.
Just to be clear though, negative experiences that current employees have are good though
What is your level and what level are you looking at in Microsoft? Levels matter a lot on WLB.
High 64 or 65, depending on the org.
What role/level are you? You might be able to find a role internally that has better WLB. We have 3 SDEs on paternity leave right now.
Most likely you guys will fire atleast one, once they are back from their leave.
Especially since the culture change that started in response to the NY Times article has been shot dead by the Amazon lifers in upper management. HR completely failed, and all of the new processes have become suggestions that can be ignored & multiple orgs are going back to stack ranking, hard bell curve requirements, top-grading, and the old promo doc group read process. You can say you won't, but when your L8 or L10 wants names for the chopping block, all 3 of those folks are at-risk "compared to their peers." Hard to raise the bar and spend time with your family, but that's their fault, I guess.