

Microsoft plans unprecedented boost in employee compensation, simpler reviews - chubot
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/ballmer-memo-microsoft-plans-unprecedented-boost-employee-compensation

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itay
You realize this is from April, right? The review period is nearly done, and
most employees should be seeing the results by September 15th.

(disclaimer: I used to work at MS until very recently)

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jbyers
From April. HN's de-duping system seems to be broken. Identical URL posted as
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2590862>.

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tomerico
At least from this example it doesn't seem broken.

Zero up votes and zero comments submissions from 50 days ago shouldn't count
as duplicates...

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chubot
All this bureaucracy sounds terrible... people focus on gaming the system
rather than doing their actual job.

I also wonder why Ballmer has to use all this corporate-speak:

"For all employees, we will shift a portion of stock award targets into base
salary, providing more cash up front and obvious incremental employee value."

"obvious incremental employee value"? Huh? Ballmer actually seems like he is a
person (if an odd one); it's funny that their communication has to be so
neutered.

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xpaulbettsx
(Disclaimer: MS Employee) I don't think that the majority of people focus on
gaming the system - the best way to game the system is still by doing awesome
work.

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jdp23
No, the best way to game the system is to suck up to your manager and tear
down the work of the people in the peer group you're being compared with. I
worked there for about 8 years and saw a large number of people doing both of
these ...

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Afton
Disclaimer: MS is a big company.

I don't see this attitude in my group _at all_. Not saying it doesn't exist
elsewhere, but people are extremely generous with sharing credit/praise, and
people overall are pretty good at standing up and publicly admitting errors.

I'm sorry you worked in a sucky group. Hope it's better where you are now.

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jdp23
Very true, and I didn't mean to tar all groups with the same brush. There are
plenty of great teams at MS which avoid these dynamics. However there are also
plenty of people gaming the system and I think if you look at Microsoft's
overall lack of success -- and the number of passionate creative people who
have left -- "the curve" and how it's applied have a lot to do with it.

