It has been quite a while since I left Microsoft. I know some people may identify me but so be it. It should be an interesting read for Microsoft folks. I’ll try to keep it short. Morals of the story: 1. Your director controls your rating, compensation, promotion, not your manager. 2. Mspoll is not anonymous IIUC. 3. You need to fight for your promotion So I started as L59 clueless new grad and I joined a random team. I was no one until problems started accumulating in our product. The product was most needed during outages and it just couldn’t scale with Azure’s explosive growth. It would just stop responding to the point that our VP complained about it “not working” in a conference call with 50 people. My team had principal and senior engineers and none even tried to fix it 😂. So I take the opportunity and make a redesign of the problematic components and the systems reliability and speed is improved literally by 1000x (response time down from 10s of seconds to less than 10ms) in a couple of months. The next outage comes and the system works like it never did. A few days later I got my 1st $50k SSA after my director recommended me for one and got my L60 promotion. Later, my manager promises me that if I finish a list of projects within 6 months then I will be promoted to L61. Shortly after he changes the list (reprioritization) and I deliver so well. Review time comes and I didn’t get a promotion so I immediately take my things and leave the office with a red face 😡. Next day 9:00AM I got a call from my director apologizing for not promoting me because HR didn’t approve another promotion in 6 months, and he says that he talked to HR and could get me an immediate promotion 👏😁. Then I started a new project in my team and the results were very promising. My director thought that the project would be revolutionary and he gives me the opportunity to lead a team of 4 people to help me get it done faster, one of them is a senior. During that I was already preparing for interviews because my compensation wasn’t all that good. The funny part: mspoll comes and I answer the following two questions: Q: Give two words that describe how you feel about working at Microsoft. Me: underpaid, demotivated Q: How long do you think you will be working for Microsoft? Me: less than 1 year. And I was really cautious not to write any free text so I won’t be identified. Next day I see a post on Blind “top performer not happy with compensation and is attrition risk” describing exactly my situation and asking for advice. It was either my manager or my director. I, of course, chimed in with others and proposed $100k SSA. Others were also advising similar things 😂 A few days later my director comes to my desk and he asks me to follow him to his office and hands me another $50k SSA 🤑. Do you still think that mspoll is anonymous? Think again! Later, I do my interviews and I got many offers including G/FB and I negotiated fiercely. My Microsoft rewards are released and guess what, I got a promotion, top rewards, and another $50k SSA. My compensation summary page shows above $300k TC for a newly promoted L62. I took a screenshot and sent it to my recruiters. Google was extremely interested and they threw me an L4 offer with L5 compensation ($150k/$50k/$500k). Then I submitted my resignation and the business admin sends me a meeting invite with the VP. The VP asks if there is anything they can do keep me and I said no. They ask me what can they do to improve? And I honestly (really without any bad intentions) complain about the difficult collaboration with other teams as we don’t get the traction we need to do our jobs. And that we don’t have the visibility into what they are doing. Three weeks after I quit my whole org (50+ people) gets dissolved completely and the engineers are assigned to other teams in Azure to get that “visibility and traction”. I really never knew that I threw a time bomb behind me when I left. I felt so bad and didn’t know that my words will have that kind of effect lol. Now I am a meh L4 engineer at Google fighting for EE rating (I don’t like the new domain)😢
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Haha that a great story TIm!
It’s also funny how super high performer is average google 😬
that's the only believable part
500K for 3 years vesting, Google L4?
4 years vesting schedule for L4.
Wow. While org got dissolved cause one 60 left.
Nope. 5 people left before I did and things were starting to collapse already as the load on us became unbearable, especially the crazy on-call. I was the last straw
While the story is amusing and some of it true, a 60 is never, say again never a last straw to dissolve an org at Microsoft. You are the smallest peg.
If Microsoft was this amazing with actioning on the feedback and people agility, it would have taken the humanity to the MARS by now. I wish you luck op and Microsoft truly treated you well. Come back to the mothership. ( ex msft here)
It all depends on your manager and director. Not really a Microsoft thing
Honestly I would have stayed if I was doing as well as you at a place, became a lead and then left in 3-5 years with a much bigger compensation bump overall.
The compensation bump was no match for Google. I needed the money and always wanted to work for Google. No doubt I was happier at Microsoft but money talks
What does it say? I’m at Microsoft so it doesn’t speak to me
What is SSA?
Special stock award
Wait, that’s a thing? I can’t even get annual stock awards anymore. They ramped down then about 3 years ago we were told that they were reserved for higher levels. I’m lvl60, been here 8 years, and have never heard of an SSA. I need to ask my manager more questions.
The only thing that surprises me about this story is that your org at Microsoft apparently actually cared about retaining high performers and was willing to pay for it.
Yeah. It's insane, right?
Maybe that’s why they got dissolved! 😂
Why do you think you're a "meh engineer" at Google?
I just don’t like the domain and the way things work at Google. I used to submit my code without even being reviewed at Microsoft (yes, I know it is a bad practice) but at Google my code gets through so many verification stages to be submitted. Productivity killer.
Your team must suck at Microsoft. Even in old exchange we have rigorous code reviewing practice. Anyway it's very common of azure to just check in and fix bugs in production lol.
A couple of things. MS Poll is taken very seriously if it is bad. Likely the message that OP was giving to the VP was a consistent one, both from internal and partner teams. So the team would likely have been dissolved irrespective of whether OP left or stayed. You should have stayed looks like you were on fast track.. Google is a great choice anyway and you can move teams easily unlike in MSFT. You can also go back to MSFT at levels higher maybe 65/66 if you play your cards right. You should keep in touch with your director and VP.
But how did they identify me? Thought it was completely anonymous! I was shocked seeing the Blind post and the SSA that followed lol
Well if you are in a small team and it can be figured out, If you have written comments. It might not be from the poll itself. People who are unhappy tend to express it to friends and things float around. Then it is easy to put together. Also your manager would have had to be a great advocate for you. If not your director and VP would have never heard about you. There is a lot of attention given to top talent. Discussed extensively.
cool story bruh
Nice username. Hope the NCB isn't grilling too hard.
Maaaal , you have ?