
Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft - transburgh
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/22/frustration-disappointment-and-apathy-my-years-at-microsoft
======
Animus7
My story is similar. I was looking to get a tech job out of college a couple
of years back, and Microsoft picked me up first (Google was also interested
with talks of similar offers but they moved much slower).

It was all interesting and new for the first few months. The team was going
through chaotic transitions at the time, so I was shuffled around many
challenging projects, all with tight deadlines and technical brokenness up the
yin-yang. Luckily for them, this kind of environment was my forte.

Being the workaholic hacker I've always been, I spent day and night slaving
away trying to fix everything. Processes, tools, bugs. I broke the daily build
a couple of times but surprisingly, nobody gave me heck about it; I was
earning a reputation as the new guy who got shit done. In retrospect, I was
probably deliberately thrown into the projects that seemed hopeless and bug-
ridden because I actually cared about this stuff.

And I realized I was the only one who cared.

The day I received my "Gold Star" (which was actually far more than the $1K
the author got), I remember walking by a sign someone had posted that said
"Change the world or go home". And then it hit me -- nobody here believed this
except me. Everything was a business case analysis. Shit remained broken and
bug-ridden because some key stakeholder needed it to work that way on their
even more broken systems. Meetings about when to schedule the next meetings.
Blame being thrown around abstract "teams", so no actual person had to be
accountable when the shit hit the fan. It was all so pointless. Sure, it made
money, and I was taking a happy slice. But I didn't care about money. I cared
about changing the world.

I deliberated for a day or two, then sent in my resignation.

What followed was several weeks of escalation and meetings with higher-up
execs trying to convince me to stay with the company, explaining their idea of
where the division was headed. The problem was that everyone literally had a
different idea of what that was. It just did more to convince me that this was
sinking ship, and they saw me as a plug.

Needless to say, I broke free, and I don't touch Microsoft products anymore. I
saw the brokenness from the inside, and I have no faith in the byproducts of
their "processes" and managerial wankery.

I'm doing the startup thing now, which in retrospect I should have been doing
in the first place. And I couldn't be happier.

~~~
mattmanser
I was chatting with a friend of mine on Thursday that MS seem to have a 'get
shit done' team that magically pops up every now and again.

Like the EF migrations project was looking really, really awful[1] and
someone's managed to turn it around and it's ended up lookig like it might be
great[2].

Or like when Rails/Django were the talk out of the town and a new MVC PHP
framework came out every day and ASP.Net was looking marginalised and
extremely dated with every passing day. Then all of a sudden from almost
nowhere comes a really great MVC framework.

Or when C# 3.5/F# came out.

There's good teams in there, it's just hard to find them I think.

[1][http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EntityFrameworkCodeFirstMigrat...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/EntityFrameworkCodeFirstMigrationsAlphaNuGetPackageOfTheWeek10.aspx)
[2][http://www.davidhayden.me/blog/asp.net-mvc-4-and-entity-
fram...](http://www.davidhayden.me/blog/asp.net-mvc-4-and-entity-framework-
database-migrations)

~~~
latch
You are talking about small projects, which, in the scale of things, are
insignificant. They are all DevDiv projects, and even within DevDiv, they are
fairly small. It's a company of 92000 employees, with some of their projects
worth billions quarterly. Your perspective, from your examples, is completely
skewed.

~~~
mattmanser
Other examples include Windows Phone and XBox both of which seemingly came
from nowhere in a 'just get it done' style.

There's some real love and skill that's been put into the XBox for example,
just browse around it some time.

My perspective is coloured by the developer stuff as that's what I'm most
interested in.

~~~
latch
Windows Phone came out 3+ years (almost 4) after the iPhone. It was the most
obvious and slowest product launch in recent memory. It also hasn't been a
great success. If Windows Phone is proof that Microsoft is doing well....It
also wasn't some spontaneous/organic product that just sprung up. It was a
massive coordinated company-wide event that took years to "pull off".

As for the Xbox, it's a _huge_ loss leaders. The division is billions in the
red. XBox 360 (which had a 33% failure rate) started to make a bit of money
last year (or maybe the year before that)..but it's a fraction of what they've
put into it. In the long term, the strategy of owning the living room might
work out, but so far, no, it neither "came out of nowhere" nor is it a succes.
The problem with consoles is that, you are only as good as your current
generation. Also, no one has managed to crack the living room yet, and they've
all tried. History tells us it's a waste of money.

~~~
Goronmon
_As for the Xbox, it's a huge loss leaders. The division is billions in the
red. XBox 360 (which had a 33% failure rate) started to make a bit of money
last year (or maybe the year before that)..but it's a fraction of what they've
put into it._

From what I've gathered, the entertainment division has been making a profit
since 2008. It's tough to get solid numbers on the contribution of the 360 to
that, since the division contained things like the Zune for a while. I would
be surprised if they don't end up profiting overall on the 360.

Sure, that might not make up for the losses on the original Xbox, but that
generation was always about gaining a foothold, not making a profit. MS didn't
have a horse in race until a year after the release of the PS2. To go from
that to the market share that the 360 commands right now is impressive.

Eve that said I don't think making money on console sales was ever the main
reason MS got into the market in the first place. I think they realized that
gaming consoles were going to become an important part of household
entertainment, even outside of gaming itself. Consoles are becoming one-stop
shops for all forms of enterainment nowadays. I use my systems to watch disc-
based media, streaming off other devices in my house, Netflix, etc. MS would
be in a really tough spot if they had let Sony snatch up this market without
putting up a fight.

------
chris_wot
When I worked at a very large software company, I worked for a division that
was absolutely riven with bugs. As time went on, I noticed that the developers
were arrogant, yet they also weren't as good as they thought they were. The QA
process was broken as nobody could touch their code, the Product Management
them were technically clueless so they didn't know how to handle the
situation, and the guy up the top, well, he was too busy playing politics that
the whole ship o' fools was springing leaks everywhere.

I got angrier and angrier. In the end I didn't give a crap and I was sending
angry emails pointing out the problems daily.

And you know what? I was part of the problem. Hindsight is a great thing, but
I wish I'd left on better terms, without anger. If you can't change the firm,
don't get angry. Smile at the people around you, be pleasant, and then resign.
You'll be much happier for it, and the foolish group you leave behind will
probably fall behind you. Getting angry didn't change this for them, they were
bound to fail anyway - why be dragged down by that?

------
jsnell
So these kinds of peeks inside a large company are fascinating in a
voyeuristic sense, but it's best to not to take them too seriously. Even
somebody with no ulterior motives will only have a experience of a narrow
slice of the company. And it's even worse when there is an obvious reason for
bias.

Certainly much of what I've seen written about Google had little to with the
reality I observed there, regardless of whether the source is a current
Googler or one of the, err..., rather vocally dissatisfied ex-Googlers. So I
don't see much reason to believe this story about Microsoft either.

~~~
mtrimpe
Could we please somehow make these incessant ad-hominem attacks against
michaelochurch stop?

I know it's backed up by 'a story only us Googlers know' that explains it all,
but the whole thing is starting to get rather childish.

~~~
jsnell
Sorry, I certainly didn't mean to pick on anyone (and that was after my time,
so I don't know the story any more than you do).

------
evoxed
I know that there are lots of smart people at Microsoft and that they are
perfectly capable of making effective products, but I think this effectively
sums up all of my feelings towards today's Microsoft:

> This company is becoming the McDonalds of computing. Cheap, mass products,
> available everywhere. No nutrients, no ideas, no culture. Windows 8 is a
> fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop, trivial updates from
> Facebook, Twitter, news sites and stock tickers. Streams of raw noise
> distract users from the moment they login.

~~~
VMG
Which is a fitting comparison because McDonalds is also wildly successful.

~~~
gouranga
Spot on. Also McDonalds just works how you expect it to.

~~~
meric
Here's my experience working at McDonald's back when I was in high school:

There were two types of managers. Those who really cared about the customer
experience, and those who just want to get paid. I was lucky enough to work
under a manager who really, really cared. The manager was not the store
manager but the assistant manager. Store managers would move into our
McDonald's, and 6 months later they'll be promoted, all because of the effort
of the assistant manager. Sometimes I would make a salad, tossing all the
ingredients inside, the assistant manager would look at it and say: "That
looks like shit. I know it's really busy right now but the customer paid EIGHT
DOLLARS for it. Go take your time and make another one. I'll come around to
help while you're doing that". He spends a lot of time trying to make the
restaurant as good as possible, and follows all guidelines to the letter. He
really worked us hard, but I loved it.

One day, he finally got promoted, and left our store. The managers after that
did not care. Using wrong gloves? Go ahead. Really busy and the food looks
like crap? Who cares. You want free food? Take it. Oh and don't worry about
cleaning the back of the grill today, I want to go home early.

I quit soon after.

I was trying to make a point of McDonald's being different to Microsoft, but
they now seem to me more same than different...

------
funcktional
Disclaimer: MS Employee To add to his comments about higher-ups dismissing his
ideas. I don't know if the OP was in a technical role or not. But I regularly
see emails from guys in my team with some radical new idea that they think
will work. In 99.99% of the cases, the ideas don't work (Scalability issues,
cost, complexity etc). It's very important for employees to also accept and
see the flaws in your ideas rather than start bawling and throwing a fit.
Likewise, it's very important for the leadership to keep encouraging these
ideas no matter how stupid they are. Our partner/principal SDEs do just that.
They're always open to new ideas. This probably varies wildly from team to
team though.

------
AshleysBrain
Replace "Microsoft" with $LARGE_COMPANY and most of the article still makes
sense.

------
mcantor
" _... my communication style was flagged as inappropriate and antagonistic._
"

That's from the anecdote about the beginning of his tenure at Microsoft.
Ironically, I think the excerpt from his "resignation" letter shows that his
communication style _is_ inappropriate and antagonistic. Sure, he was angry
when he wrote the "last laugh" letter, so the emotions were likely quite
different. But he did not express himself very effectively, instead focusing
on his feelings and his certainty that he's correct. If he did that in his
initial suggestion, no wonder no one listened.

------
stevenj
In my experience, I haven't gotten along with 9/10 people I've met who work at
-- and are passionate about -- Microsoft.

It's not because they're not driven to succeed (they are). Nor is it because
they're overly confident.

It's because all 9 have lacked empathy and/or the ability to listen.

Now I can tolerate that, provided you do great work.

I've learned that if you can't separate the art from the artist, you may not
enjoy much.

But since I think Microsoft creates pretty crappy art, its employees'
personalities have really rubbed me with wrong way.

(Which I find interesting, because I think empathy plays an integral role in
making great products.)

~~~
danssig
Realistically, what "great products" has MS produced? From my perspective, MS
has always been vastly better at winning the market because they're nearly
always competing with inferior products.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They are at least mature products. I've worked on kernel code in Sun product,
linux and Windows. And Windows was the only one done professionally, with
mature complete APIs and some kind of design.

linux was the least mature. The kernel was a maze, there were 3 similar-but-
fatally-different APIs for modules depending on where you graft them in (app,
loadable driver, kernel driver), only 1 model of memory mapping was supported.
And the code quality was very low. Nearly identical complete methods for
trivial differences in argument (instead of calling common code). The same
variable names used in different places for very, very different things (e.g.
'page' used for a page table entry, a page table pointer, a page directory
pointer, a page directory, a page directory entry...) Spaghetti style code
paths.

A large company like MS may have no coherent ethics or direction. But they
have Lots of resources to actually, completely, exhaustively complete a code
module with everything tested and in place.

So the products may not be great, or apply perfectly to solve your problem.
Consider we're developers and our problems are pretty not much on MS's mind
anyway. But they are responsibly coded and completed, which is a big thing.

~~~
danssig
>linux was the least mature.

This I can agree with. I'm surprised that MS was well done though because
their API appears to be a mess if Wine is any indication.

------
LVB
I've seen this type of story many times. All that can be concluded is that Max
and Microsoft simply aren't compatible with each other. Nothing shocking with
that... he picked the wrong place to start his career and they hired the wrong
guy.

I take more seriously the critiques of long-time employees who are truly
devoted to a company or project, try and try different approaches to improving
things (which of course includes putting up with a lot of unsavory BS), and
eventually (and usually sorrowfully) have to part ways because they can't
influence things enough and need to move on with their lives.

Max's account is of someone who was annoyed within a year or two, started
protesting in a way that wasn't effective, and pushed it until he got fired.

There _are_ ways to get changes made in Big Co., but it won't be 100% on the
individual's terms. You need to first get them to really listen to you, and I
don't think that occurred here.

~~~
harryf
> There are ways to get changes made in Big Co.

Very true. I have this book in my head that might one day get written. Title
would be something like "Intreprenauring: Innovating within Large Stupid
Organizations" with a focus on practical "hacks" for getting stuff done.
Probably all been said by Dilbert already though.

~~~
kposehn
> "Intreprenauring: Innovating within Large Stupid Organizations"

 _Please write that book_

~~~
olliesaunders
How about these?

[http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Culture-Commitment-High-
te...](http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Culture-Commitment-High-tech-
Corporation/dp/1592135463/)

[http://www.amazon.com/neanderthals-work-people-politics-
driv...](http://www.amazon.com/neanderthals-work-people-politics-
drive/dp/0471527270/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Leadership-Personal-
Journey...](http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Leadership-Personal-Journey-
Changing/dp/1905785674/)

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Only-Sane-Working-
Here/dp/00716087...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Only-Sane-Working-
Here/dp/0071608729/)

------
fpp
How times changes - just compare this to Douglas Coupland's short stories in
Wired aka "14 days in the life of a microserf" (was later published as a book
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs> )

------
AznHisoka
I can empathize with the OP, but why go through the hassle of causing a
commotion, and making it a Techcrunch story? Just leave amicably - they're NOT
forcing you to work. You can get up and leave anytime you want, which is the
mature thing to do.

~~~
michaelochurch
I think we should encourage people like OP to speak up.

For years, we've had a climate where people are terrified to speak up about
unethical management practices, bad hiring and worse firing, and other
idiocies within organizations where they've worked. Why? Why is the employee
supposed to protect an employer that might have screwed him over royally?

This is American Spring. People are speaking the fuck up, and it's great. It
puts a damper on the idiotic and unethical behaviors that companies will
pursue if they can get away with it. Companies will be less likely to pursue
unethical management practices (or, failing that, more likely to cut generous
severance checks; and generous severance to people like OP means more
startups) if people are unafraid to speak up when they're treated badly.

~~~
tallanvor
"American Spring"? Hardly. We're not talking about the government, here.

Look, you want to make complaints about your former employer? Fine. But if you
do so publicly, be prepared to have a much harder time finding your next job
(or if you've already found your next job, they may reevaluate their decision
to hire you). Any company should be wary about hiring someone who has a
history of airing their dirty laundry in public.

The truth is that if you want to, you can create change, even in large
companies like Microsoft, and even without being in a management position.
Most people are simply too impatient and not willing to do the work. --It
takes time to build influence and figure out what has to be said in public vs
in private. Most(?) engineers aren't very good at politics - we're blunt and
worry more about saying what we think needs to be said than how people will
take it, an approach that tends to fail miserably when dealing with non-
engineers.

And, of course, eventually you'll probably move to another company no matter
what. When I've decided to move on, I've always made sure to send my manager
an email describing what I think the company was doing right, what it was
doing wrong, and what made me decide it was time to leave. At that point, they
can decide how much of that they want to share up the management chain, and
this way I don't burn bridges.

~~~
kamaal
>> _The truth is that if you want to, you can create change, even in large
companies like Microsoft, and even without being in a management position.
Most people are simply too impatient and not willing to do the work._

My experience has been the opposite. Every time I've tried to create some nice
stuff, the manager above me always perceived as a threat to his position.

And he purposefully rewarded under performers and build his own gang around
such people to gather support.

In fact one manager told me, I am not a good player because _I was going too
fast, and good team player always goes as fast his team_.

In other words, he wanted me to become as inefficient as others if I had to
become his best man.

Good experience in $LARGECOMPANIES are exceptions, not rules.

------
spodek
The writer didn't mention any drive of his own except to work at a company
whose products he liked, but didn't learn about the company culture before
joining.

If you want a great job, you have to take responsibility for making it great.
If you don't take that responsibility, blaming the employer won't help. The
company had a strategy long before you joined you can learn about before
joining. If you didn't learn about it before joining, how can you complain
about it?

The email to the VP he closed with didn't help the company. He just vented.
Who wants a petulant employee?

We can learn from his experience to find out before joining a team if we can
create the environment for ourselves we want, then to do so.

~~~
RandallBrown
How do you change the culture at a company like Microsoft though? I think in
this case he tried to change it and found it too daunting. He got jaded and
burned out. Sure, he should have handled it differently but sometimes stuff
happens.

------
zackzackzack
The rule of "show not tell" was wildly violated here. Could have been a good
story if it had been rooted in reality.

~~~
mcantor
Very truetruetrue.

------
hung
Sort of lost his credibility after he revealed that he was canned. If you're
spinning your wheels at a company and hate the culture, why not do something
about it? You're as bad as the useless meeting-goers if you can't actually do
something and simply complain all the time.

For what it's worth, I was at MS for 7 months. Left on my own volition and now
I'm heading up iOS development at a small startup. And it's a lot of fun.

~~~
darksaga
I had the same reaction. He would have kept his respect with me had he lobbed
a few grenades in his resignation letter. However, kicking the devil in the
nuts and then expecting something positive to happen was surprising.

------
politician
Perhaps I have this backwards, but these "why I left Company X: they suck"
articles just remind me of people who leave games in a huff and a puff and a
flurry of forum drama.

------
franze
well, does not seem too different from other big companies i met over the
years. but blaming "the system" is just the easy way out. it is your job to be
productive in an environment, if you can't, leave, better sooner than later -
you are just becoming part of overhead you are complaining about.

------
msg
You can cut to the chase pretty fast if you read between the lines at Mini-
MSFT (especially the comment threads). Sure, some of it is outright BS. I'm
sure trolls fabricate some comments. But in the middle of the curve, disputed
by no one, are some real management horrorshows. They name names and pull no
punches.

I can add my anecdote. I have a high-performing friend at Microsoft who got
screwed last year after a mid-year promotion (because of how Microsoft works
their performance-related rewards, I gather he got stuck at the low end of a
higher-level salary curve and dinged for the next years). He started sending
out his resume.

It sounds like a bloodsport, and I'm not evil enough to want to win. So I'm
not heading to Microsoft this side of forever.

------
ehdv
Something about this struck me as odd – having interned in the Windows org in
Redmond, there are no such things as “business managers” – this may be a
byproduct of Sinofsky’s leadership, but up to the VP level core product teams
only have SDEs (devs), SDETs (tests), and PMs (program managers). GPMs and
others above the manager level were busy with meetings for much of their days,
but the ICs were not expected to be at all of those, so the obsession with
colorful boxes he describes wasn’t something I ever witnessed. Maybe his
experience was with a different product, but Windows and Office are certainly
quite different from this.

------
iamtoby2003
I completely understand how OP feels. but the sad truth is when companies grow
big enough, bureaucracy happens. I don't believe other giant tech companies
are doing any better than microsoft. You either suck it up and play the games
along or leave and start your own. sometimes you have to grow up and accept
the fact that no leaders like rebels. if you want to change the game, become a
leader first.....

------
iamtoby2003
I completely understand how OP feels. but the sad truth is when companies grow
bigger, bureaucracy happens. i dont believe other giant tech companies are
doing any better. you either suck it up and play the game along or bail and
start your own. sometimes you have to grow up and face the truth that no
leaders like rebels. if u want to change the game, become a leader first....

~~~
astrodust
Microsoft allegedly has fourteen layers of management. They're not the biggest
company around, many have significantly more employees, but this is a
disproportionate amount of bureaucracy.

A more tightly run ship can get that down to six layers at most, some even
less. The shorter the chain of command, the more reactive the company will be.

------
chj
Been there. I can't express how I hate those meetings. The problem is deep. I
mean they would have to change the culture, and therefore have to fire off a
lot of top managers. Of course, that is never going to happen.

------
xyahoo
s/microsoft/yahoo/ig and it would be dead on.

After reading this rant, I'm starting to think that all software companies
become like this after a while. Extrapolating, I'm guessing Google has 2-3
years to go before they are ruined...

------
benjash
I just had a moment of clarity.

Bill gates had vision to make millions of jobs.

What if Microsoft was efficient?

Relative to the amount of money it could make, it would only take a relatively
small team of developers and R&D teams (in a perfect world). How many teams of
managers etc does it really take? Think of the amount of money that would
make. Think of the money businesses would save not having IT support teams
etc.

But the fact is, Microsoft aren't the bad guys.

These guys employee countless numbers of people. Around the world, Think of
all the products that every business needs that Microsoft ressellers profit
out of. How many IT support staff are fed by microsofts hand.

Personally i think Microsoft are doing a good job of sharing the wealth.

~~~
chris_wot
I don't think that's a very good argument. You could just as equally ask how
many talented people they have employed who could be doing more productive
things that generate more wealth and jobs.

------
robryan
Not sure I'd feel comfortable working at a place where you can be fired and
escorted from the building after 5 years because you voiced your concerns
about company direction.

~~~
codeonfire
Which is why everyone should aspire to be majority owner of their business.
Because that place your not comfortable with is every job on the planet.

------
FameofLight
Whatever maybe the motivation behind this post, but I think people should
refrain from bashing out there previous employer, leaving in bad suit is very
bad.

------
SimHacker
At Sun, they ended up promoting this one troublesome executive to "Vice
President in Charge of Looking for a New Job".

------
zerop
Is it professional to badmouth your ex-employer?

~~~
danssig
Your ex-employer certainly doesn't think so. Especially if they were awful.

Personally, I'd like to see as much transparency as possible. Jobs are a
market like anything else. The more transparent, the more possibilities for
efficiency.

------
loverobots
On one hand MS's huge cash cow can hide so many horrible decisions, but as a
company they are doing great. Especially for a "dead" one. According to some
bloggers they should have been decomposed by now but they are making almost
$25 BILLION a year in pure profit, while investing in a lot of new stuff that
can always be put in the market by another mgmt team (imagine what sits on
those Microsoft Research labs /hard drives /notepads)

 _This company is becoming the McDonalds of computing. Cheap, mass products,
available everywhere. No nutrients, no ideas, no culture._

I love McD's. I love getting the same burger almost anywhere in the world and
it's exactly what I expect it to be. No, not cholesterol lowering food, if I
want that I'll eat salmon or some other stuff. But McD's is great and it does
what it promised.

 _Windows 8 is a fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop,
trivial updates from Facebook, Twitter, news sites and stock tickers. Streams
of raw noise distract users from the moment they login._

TURN it off on your system. The world is spending a gazillion hours on FB and
Twitter, do you expect MS to ignore that? Image the "MS ignores reality on
Windows 8" headlines had they not done this. Companies are notorious for
moving slow, those wildly profitable even slower. Don't expect them to change
a winning formula because you write a few emails. Start your own company and
beat them.

------
michaelochurch
OP's story is unfortunate, but this is tame compared to some of the things
I've seen or heard of in the past five years. If this is TC-worthy, I've seen
enough dirt to fertilize the Sahara.

This is a case of company and person who didn't work out, but it doesn't leave
me feeling that Microsoft was unethical or mean-spirited about it (which is
more than I can say of many, many companies). Badly run, sure, but not evil.
Microsoft offered him a severance, and they gave him ample warning. Besides,
if the company (or, at least, the part of it into which he landed) was that
bad, why'd he stick around for so many years?

 _Why look for work elsewhere when I could coast from meeting to meeting,
uttering and typing meaningless busywork. I could not relinquish that kind of
comfort._

I may be unusual, but I get nervous and antsy in this kind of "comfort". It
just makes me feel like no one is getting anything done and disaster is
coming. Also, experience has led me to conclude that when the group is
underperforming, the "rebel" rather than the cause of the underperformance is
the one to get smited, utterly regardless of individual performance. So,
environments where nothing is getting done scare me. Even if _I_ am
individually doing great, there's going to be blame to be allocated, and the
fact that I'm individually an asset to the team is no shield.

In my mind, working itself is fun. Even when difficult and frustrating, actual
_work_ is not stressful, except in very rare moments of crisis. Those
interminable sitting-down "stand up" (do people not know what the fucking
words mean?) meetings that many companies have, on the other hand... fucking
intolerable. I would not be "comfortable" if my calendar had 5 hours per day
of status meetings and pointless chatter on it. I'd go insane.

 _My planned and promised promotion was cancelled._

That should have launched a thousand resumes. Or at least five or six. Why
delay in getting ready? As OP has learned, they won't. Corporate "loyalty" is
dead. Just don't "job hop" if you chance upon the one company in 20 that
actually treats its employees decently and knows what it is doing... because,
unless you know where you're going and trust the people you'll be working
with, you probably won't find another. Job hopping is only stupid/dodgy when
you leave a _good_ company for a pay raise.

 _Official HR warnings were sent._

Anyone who is not looking for another job after the first "official" warning
is sent is a fucking moron. It doesn't even have to come from HR. Negative
_verbal_ feedback from the boss might be genuine constructive criticism. He
might be trying to groom you into a leader. Negative _written_ feedback, such
as an email? That is _not_ ever to your advantage. If your boss is genuinely
trying to improve you or groom you for something better, all such feedback
will be verbal. Hostile email? Then get the fuck out. The case is being built.

For the record, PIPs (which is what the "dubious case" sounds like) are a
kangaroo court and they can be emotionally draining. The trick is to recognize
what they are and _not_ get emotionally drained. (The reason to avoid
emotional drain is _not_ to save your current job; that's over. It's to do
well in your transition and next job.) Don't get emotional. It's just a damn
game, and the only way to win is to get out. Forget the shitty sweet talk.
This manager doesn't want to "improve" you. He wants to get rid of you. Your
job is to leave on your own terms before you get fired-- or, if that can't be
done for some reason, engage in the legalistic fighting but realize that the
best-case scenario is for the PIP to be ruled "inconclusive" and, unless you
can transfer after that, have the manager PIP you again. Almost no one ever
passes a PIP. Most people leave; the rest either get fired or the PIP is ruled
"inconclusive".

 _I was offered 12-weeks’ pay for an amicable departure._

Take it. More than enough time to get another job.

 _Instead I decided to escalate the thoughts above to the highest echelons of
Microsoft._

Terrible move. Like, Ned Stark in Game of Thrones. Managers and executives are
fundamentally _tribal_. Most of them will protect their own, at any ethical or
business cost except their own skin. If you go against one manager in front of
another, your credibility is shark-shit at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Likewise, never threaten to leave a job over managerial misbehavior. You'll
just get fired. You don't threaten to get another job (unless you've found one
and are trying for severance). Just get another job.

~~~
illumos
Thanks so much for sharing this! Your other comment(link:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3871688>) and this post show(link:
[http://skloverworkingwisdom.com/blog/index.php/performance-i...](http://skloverworkingwisdom.com/blog/index.php/performance-
improvement-plan-pip-can-my-new-boss-do-that) ) how common this is. In my
personal experience, even startups do this.

Which I guess is more fault to US law having high severance cost, than people
being sociopaths.

In fact, don't try to anthropomorphize the companies (Bryan Cantryl said that
out loud recently about Oracle:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-zRN7XLCRhc#t=2306s)
, but it applies to all companies and all bosses).

~~~
michaelochurch
"Fault to US law having high severance cost"? No. That's not it.

When you factor in morale damage and the amount of managerial time spent on
them, it's more expensive to run a PIP than to let someone go with a severance
package.

PIPs are paper shields in a lawsuit, and do nothing about disparagement, which
severance contracts usually cover. A PIP doesn't actually establish that the
employee was an objective underperformer, only that he "should have seen it
coming".

The real purpose of the PIP is two-fold. First, it's to make the employee feel
like he _deserves_ to be fired or that he has no recourse, even though that's
not true. Second, it's to make the HR and finance offices look good because
they "saved money" on severance packages, when what they actually did was
externalized the costs to that employee's team.

PIPs make no sense. When companies fire people, it's typical to close out that
person's computer access and take him out of the building immediately, as if
it's a danger to have him in the building for another minute. Yet companies
have no qualms about keeping an essentially fired employee in the office for
_a month_ on a PIP.

~~~
tomkarlo
PIPs have a purpose. Just as there has to be an orderly and codified system
for promotion in larger companies (to avoid favoritism, etc.) there generally
has to be a codified system for termination due to under-performance. A
manager shouldn't just be able to fire one of his team arbitrarily when they
haven't broken any rules/policy.

PIPs provide a codified, constructive way to deal with these situations; they
make explicit to the employee that they're on the edge of being let go, and
they force the manager through a process to demonstrate that the employee is
not appropriately qualified or motivated for their job. No manager _wants_ to
do a PIP. Frankly, it's usually easier to just pawn an underperformer off on
on another team. But the reality is there are appropriate situations to do one
where just passing the buck is unacceptable.

I have seen folks get PIP'ed and let go, and I've seen some come back and have
a good career with the company. (Obviously the latter is less common.) In some
cases where you have a young guy who just isn't stepping up, the PIP process
serves as a wake-up call that the manager isn't kidding around.

------
verra
Similar story here, though I left on my own. Couldn't be happier!

------
hk_kh
True and sad story.

Frustation, disappointment and apathy happen in most workplaces (startups
included). However, best approach: evolve.

