I’ve been working as a Dev in Azure for 7 months now (lvl 60) and I’ve written a total of about 100 lines of code... I spend most of my time writing proposals (for features that I want to build), integration testing plans, and spending an ABSURD amount of time in meetings and going over ADO items (basically PM work). I’ve complained about this to my manager multiple times and we just do more “days of learning” and other BS that doesn’t actually affect how much code I push. Is this typical? I feel like I’m losing my software skills and it’s low-key pissing me off. TC: $190K YoE: 7mo Lvl: 60
Same I want to be in your position.
Haha. I have been at Microsoft for under a year and I have coded up and entire service offering by myself. I have 3 or 4 proposals to write that I have no time for. Don't think your experience is typical.
Are you L60 as well?
This is the answer I was looking for. I’d rather be swamped with deliverables than idly spinning my wheels. But I want to stay at MS bc i love the culture. I’m going to dig around for other teams to work with. Thank you!
Dream job
You could code on lc
Doesn't sound normal... try to change teams? Unfortunately that's a pain in the ass at Microsoft.
I agree. I am L60 and I have so much code work that sometimes I am not able to keep up. I need to delay some tasks.
Your situation is not typical at Microsoft. But it’s good that Microsoft doesn’t officially track coding contributors. It all depends on your manager’s perception
New grad 60? Isn’t it 59?
If they have some experience or they negotiate even tiny bit, most new grads can get lvl 60
"most" is an overstatement. Some can, particularly if they've interned more than once at MS. A bunch of managers this summer were reluctant to give 60 offers. (Ironically some 59 had level 60 offers minus a couple thousand TC 😂😂)
What is the rationale behind saying this a dream job?
You must be new. Being a coding monkey gets boring real fast. Once you start leveling up the real impactful work comes through meetings, docs, and proposals. To some people, this is more fun. Fewer crazy deadlines or stressful nights and a better wlb
Agreed. It’s actually pretty demoralizing to see very little of your work impact the product
Same here. I am in the same boat. Level 61, haven't even written 10 lines of code in the past one year. And what ever pull requests I raised were about increasing the number of machines or copy the code from some other service. I would suggest move to a different team. Had to keep myself occupied with leetcode competition in order to code in whatever capacity I could. I have a couple of offers now. I would suggest read open source projects in the mean time, make sure you have some back up stories. Try to make use of internal microsoft streams to make up some hypothetical projects, learn async programming in c#. Either change your team or change the company. Or else you will be unemployable by the next year or so. Make sure you have no signed agreement with Microsoft otherwise you might have to return the bonus and relocation money - non prorated.
Vote with your feet.
Or hit me up.. looking for a technical co-founder :)
I want your job so bad 😞
Damn that many people want to become a SWE to just sit around? I do this bc I love software not because I want a well-paying job with no value added.
Bro/sis just code in your free time