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At first I thought this was a joke. But it's dead serious.


This has to be a joke.


Nope, these are actual guidelines Microsoft uses to make hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. city41's comment is 100% accurate about how these things are used.

The entire list of 'competencies' is here: http://www.microsoft.com/education/competencies/allcompetenc...

It probably started as your typical big-company CYA in case someone tries to sue them for HR-related stuff and grew into this monster as some middle manager began empire-building.

There's even a wheel, in case you felt like making a poster: (pdf) http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/4/7/3477e49d-315d-4...


These linked ones are the education ones. They are completely different in content from the ones used in in the product team roles.


It's terrifying, but I agree. This has to be real... I want it to be a joke, because it'd be pretty frickin' funny if it were, but it can't be.

I was about to post the same discovery, but you beat me to it. Bah! And +1!


For some reason, humor and compassion are the only competencies that don't appear on the wheel. Also, does anyone else find it troubling that "results" make up such a thin sliver of the wheel o' competency?


> Nope, these are actual guidelines Microsoft uses to make hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. city41's comment is 100% accurate about how these things are used.

So... it's edgy humor in the form of a terrifying practical joke? Maybe Andy Kaufman didn't die after all.


You need to think like a large-company HR director. Every employee must have an appropriate rank to justify his or her salary, and a list of qualifications to justify the rank, so that nobody can say “hey, this guy across the hall is doing exactly the same work as me, but I’m paid less, that’s not fair”.

All other things being equal, wouldn’t you rather have a manager or co-worker with a good sense of humor than one without? Therefore, don’t employees with good senses of humor deserve to be paid more than the humorless ones? If Microsoft doesn’t recognize and reward how employee-led humor adds value to their stakeholders, then all the employees with good senses of humor will bolt the company, attracted by the free clown suits that Google offers.


That's what she said.


And that is the joke itself, isn't it? The fun is in the fact that one can't tell whether it is meant to be serious or not.




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