Leaked Microsoft memo tells managers not to use budget cuts as an explainer for lack of pay rises: ‘Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact’::Managers are being ordered to dodge employees’ questions about how the latest budget cuts will impact their pay.
This is so backwards. I had to read this a few times to try to make sense of the memo. Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn’t get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?
That’s stupid. That would obviously have the opposite effect of softening the disappointment. Whoever wrote this memo is an idiot who has no idea what employees do or what they think.
It’s only stupid if you think Microsoft wants to retain employees.
The tech industry is contracting after over expanding during the pandemic and, instead of layoffs, MS is hoping to get to their budget cuts by attrition.
Enjoy that Dead Sea Effect.
Don’t worry, if a competitor shows up (possibly started by an ex employee), they can just buy them. The lack of any kind of anti trust enforcement made the whole concept of innovation by competition irrelevant.
Yes, this is a tactic used by lots of the large software companies when they want to raise the bottom, and phase out an aging workforce because saying the word “layoffs” affects share price. It also helps to reduce the salary demands of any incoming workers to replace the outgoing, because the baseline gets reset without having to justify why profits are high, but workers won’t be getting any of that.
An example with Google in 2021-2022: tell all your middle-managers they’ll need to do something unreasonable like relocate to keep their job, wait for some to leave, then put the rest on PIPs and promise their underlings they can apply for the soon-to-be vacant role if they keep up the good work. Effectively, Google only had to publicly acknowledge firing 12,000 employees, when closer to 20,000 were displaced for various reasons. It’s a shitty shell game to keep the share price high, and force people who stick around to more work for less money.
I might get sick. This is so disgusting I can’t even. Thanks for pointing that out. As an entrepreneur, I always try to make it worth everyones time. Seeing stuff like this just makes me sad.
As an entrepreneur, I always try to make it worth everyones time.
The “Win-Win” strategy is always the best strategy, long term.
Honestly, I agree that it’s the best strategy for all people involved but not one to retire with. I think our world is much too harsh to accept all people winning. So, while I‘m not willing to do the „fuck you I got mine“, I think that’s the way to make the home run.
Honestly, I agree that it’s the best strategy for all people involved but not one to retire with.
I don’t know, I retired with that. /shrug
I think our world is much too harsh to accept all people winning
It’s only harsh because we don’t help each other with the win-wins. Honestly, just think of a world where we all cooperating with each other 24/7, how that would look.
So, while I‘m not willing to do the „fuck you I got mine“, I think that’s the way to make the home run.
When everyone is fighting everyone then only a few benefit from that, usually the ones already at the top.
I appreciate your thoughts, I really do. But so far we have made different experiences and neither of us can prove that their theory is (the only) viable. I can tell you that I would have retired, had I not given back as much as I did, you‘re saying you actually did. Neither of us knows how much or little the other one actually did, how viable their strategy was to begin with and so on. I don’t see this going very far on that basis.
For what it’s worth I’m not basing my opinions on your life experiences, but what I see everyone going through, and “The Human Condition”, and how people are.
I believe you’re being overly cynical, but I totally understand one’s personal perspective can set that level of cynicism, as they go through life.
No companies will always frame any negative situation as the employees fault. It’s gasslighting 101
I just want to add that my brother had this happen today. He’s a contractor at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and he asked his direct report whether they’ll be renewing his contract next month. They said that they didn’t know, because a high level manager who has never met him or likely seen any piece of his work is still assessing my brother’s performance.
I pointed out that based on what he knows of the project and his role, he’s fully qualified to answer this question: is it at all possible that they’re invested in the success of the project, but think that letting him go and then starting a totally new contract hire search is going to make the project any less expensive or faster?
The answer is obvious. They might let him go because they lose interest in this wildly neglected project, but his performance is objectively nowhere near a level where replacing him would save time or money, and if they were serious this decision would’ve been made weeks ago. They clearly have no idea what they’re doing next month and negging him while they try to figure out what the hell their goals are.
I would find a new contract and bounce at the end without notice.
My company tanked last year and I ended up getting laid off, and as part of the process senior leadership owned the budget problems and in my layoff, I was given full pay for 16 weeks and uncontested unemployment (which I did not end up needing), as well as a job recommendation. Fortune 100 company.
Microsoft fucked up here and this manager memo is ridiculously stupid. This is how you hemorrhage the talent you’re trying desperately to keep during budget shortfalls.
Companies aren’t supervillains. They’re just people, and people here fucked up.
Meanwhile the C-suite are getting record compensation and stock buybacks. There is no “budget shortfall”, it’s just typical greed at the top that’s hoping the rank and file will swallow it.
My company didn’t respond to COVID aggressively and lost market share to competitors, and our CEO stepped down because of it.
Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn’t get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?
This is what you do if you want to encourage attrition.
They want to neg their employees, sounds like.
Every corp knows we’re in late stage capitalism. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore. Any individual that makes a billion dollars should be viewed as an enemy, even millionaires should be very nervous.
What - you can’t even buy a nice two-bedroom condo here for a million dollars, I think you need to re-evaluate what a millionaire is today.
Buying a million dollar house and being a millionaire are two different things. Multi millionaires are part of the problem as well.
I took it to mean people who earn that much per year. The average person working a $30k+ job should have more than a million in the bank at retirement, and that should have been enough to retire on comfortably. Now I’m being told it’s more than 1.5-2 million dollars at retirement.
You pretty much need to be a multimillionaire to retire these days and it’s not that hard to do with a half decent job and basic retirement planning, especially when factoring in a home to your net worth (which is standard). Millionaires are not the enemy. $1m is 1000x closer to $0 than $1B.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but “get a half decent job, do basic planning, and factor in the cost of the home you definitely own” is a massive simplification and a lot of people cannot meet those requirements through no fault of their own.
Yeah, thats already proper middle class, and middle class is pretty hard for a lot of people to attain these days.
Most people are not even able to accumulate any capital while paying bills. If you‘re not in the fortunate position of a collage education or similar, you‘re pretty fucked.
Even with a college education, you’re usually fucked.
Most people talking about how to become multimillionaires have the benefit of generational wealth. Even if they’re not directly dipping in to family funds, it’s a support system that us poors don’t have.
Always have to link this comic when generational wealth comes up.
Personally I know that I’m one of the ones who lucked out. My family wasn’t rich but we didn’t struggle. I’d like that to be the minimum experience for everybody.
Tell me about it. Grew up poor, kicked out of school due to undiagnosed neurological stuff.
I did manage to build a company out of thin air (and working 16 hrs a day). Then covid happened. I‘m rather gonna starve than go back an suck corpo cock.
Not saying everyone can do it, just that we’re all on the same side. It’s important to remember who your friends are. The doctor that works 12h+ a day and has a few million in the bank is not the same as the billionaire playing God and zipping around to all major world events in their private jet while siphoning profits from thousands of workers.
That depends on which side the doctor decides to support. A few million lets you play the game, and even if you’re just a pawn, you can do some damage.
What about us hundredaires?
You have a positive balance? :o
Two negatives are a positive, right?
You’ll be given cushy jobs!
Check out Mr/Mrs money bags over here.
You get eaten after the thousandaires
The same late stage capitalism we’ve been in since the term was coined 175 years ago?
Later in the stage? The term was coined before the stage happened. End of WWI was supposedly the start and I don’t think the idea was that it would implode the instance the stage was hit. We got a bit of a bounce back with the tech boom, that’s clearly over. Unless another major frontier pops up that isn’t immediately sucked dry by the already rich, we’re at the end.
Ya man. This capitalism should be dying off any day now… as soon as I finish my starbucks while playing starfield in my rented condo… meh… ill think about it next week.
You had me at starfield! Goodbye for a while, family!
“You claim to by against capitalism and yet, here you are participating in a capitalist economy… Curious.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer Christopher Capossela told employees angry about the lack of salary raises that their best way to increase their pay is to make the stock go higher—after cashing out $4.4 million worth of stock.
Classy.
‘unique opportunity for impact’
Impact can’t pay my fucking debt
In other words “Leaked memo tells managers to lie”.
It’s not the lie that matters. It’s what the lie is.
I think most of us just assume lying is the standard from companies.
Fuck Microsoft and Fuck Satya Nadella
How did big tech companies got like these? Bigger cut for owners? I remember when a person got a job in Microsoft, Google, etc, it meant that they were financial stable in a good job that didn’t drain all of their energy. We need tech more than ever now. Is it because there are so many devs these days? AI? All these things all together?
Free investor money ran out with the higher interest rates. The higher interest rates that were made to combat inflation, which again are mostly because of corporate greed.
Basically wages were going up, workers were getting a bigger slice of the pie against corporate profits - not that profits were dropping mind you, just not going up as fast as wages for a bit. So corporations as a block decided that the shock from supply chain distruptions means they get to raise prices. Somehow supply chain disruptions didn’t show up on the bottom line though, so they got to make record profit, but we got record inflation. The gutted governments instead of taxing the windfall profits, because they can’t do that because politics, were just watching as central banks increased interest rates that clobbered wages back.
It’s just the system in action, when the 200 oligarchs holding the reins in America decide the workers of the “free world” have a bit too much, they crank up prices, which decreases wages even beyond the effect of said price increases.
I wonder how do you think taxes would reduce inflation? It could only work if you taxed low wage workers to hell.
It could only work if you taxed low wage workers to hell.
Citation needed.
Citation for what? What do you expect taxes to do?
Citation needed to show that we can’t curb inflation by taxing the wealthy but that the only way is to tax low wage workers more.
But let’s say you do provide a citation that proves taxing the poor, as close to death as possible, is the only way to make capitalism continue working - then I’d say let’s eat the rich because their promises of a better life are only meant for themselves.
More money in the hands of working class people + equal or less of working class goods = essentials worth more
The problem would be that working class people need different stuff than rich people spend/invest a bulk of their money on. If a billionaire can’t afford a yacht or a mansion that won’t effect the price of bread or single family homes if the working class still has an inflated money supply.
I’m not an economists, nor do I have the solutions to any problems, but I think the above concept is pretty set in stone.
Or maybe instead of building a yacht they would build more public housing. If the workers could decide between the two, then I would think there would be more homes and less mega yachts.
Taxing the wealth was tried numerous times all over the world since Ancient Rome and it NEVER worked. Recent example is that in 1990 12 OECD countries had wealth tax, only 5 have it these days. More info here.
So the only two option you have is to either increase income tax or VAT. Income taxes do not affect the rich as they rarely have any income and live off their wealth and dividends. Increasing VAT will also disproportionately affect the poor. This is why I said that taxes will just kill off the poor.
What’s the solution? Increase base rates! Yes, they do affect mortgages of home owners from lower and middle classes, but they affect the rich a lot more. Let me explain.
So, let’s rewind a few years back when rates were super low. Imagine you’re rich, live in London and you either own your £20m house outright or you have a mortgage, but your equity is high, like 50%+. Now you don’t have an income, but you need £50k cash for pocket money and you also want to buy a new car for £150k. You don’t want to sell your equities and stocks, that’s just dumb. And you don’t want to buy a car through financing because interest rates will be high like 8% or so. Plus financing won’t give you a deposit and £50k pocket money. So what do you do? You remortgage your house, lower your equity by £200k, you get an interest rate something like 1.2% and you pay zero bloody taxes. And you get £200k cash in hand to buy your car outright.
But now the governments all over the world are increasing the rates and you can’t remortgage your house at 1.2% anymore. Now your interest rate will be 8% for example. Now you will be losing quite a lot of money if you do so. So will you remortgage? I won’t in their shoes. I would rather wait for a bit for the markets to calm down. And those who can’t wait will inject quite a bit of money into the state budget.
So, to sum things up. Taxes affect the poor, base rates affect the rich. What needs to be done additionally is a safety net for home buyers from low and middle classes to help them out during these times. This is the bit that’s missing, not taxes.
These idiots think that inflation is driven by spending, so if people are buying and investing that prices will rise.
So they think that raising rates will reduce access to loans/debt which will reduce consumer spending which will reduce inflation.
The running explanation is that an inflation rate of 2% is “healthy” and prevents hoarding.
2% inflation means that my money is worth less tomorrow, and experts seem to agree that that means I’m going to spend my money “correctly”.
2% deflation means that my money is worth more tomorrow, and experts seem to agree that that means I’m going to starve myself and live like a hermit while hoarding my money because nobody would ever buy anything if it would be cheaper next year.
It’s all bullshit.
It’s not bullshit, that’s the thing.
This is capitalism working as intended.
Literally carrot on a stick tactics
Men, many of you won’t survive, but think of the glory! Hail Microsoft!!!
“You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.” - Captain Zap Brannigan
“Sorry, you’re not getting a cost of living increase this year, but what you need to focus on is how impactful your work has been.”
The reward is in thinking of all the money you’re making us!
Please enjoy these photos of me and my family on the yacht you helped me afford. I hope the smiles on their faces bring you some warmth and joy inside your dank, overpriced basement apartment.
Keep up the good work!
Eat the fucking rich
I kinda hate how it seems like programming will be at best a 30 per hour job in the future, likely leading to me needing two jobs. Its like I just graduated and I’m kinda frustrated with the state of this industry
Not to mention back to the office bullshit will sooner or later force me to move somewhere with a 10X cost of living.
I spent a bunch of time in the meat grinder.
Your bosses, and you’ll have many, will be dumb. Your peers will have egos, and when they finally get a promotion (probably one that doesn’t include a pay increase), they’ll go out of their way to stifle any creative control you might have. By the time you burn out you’ll probably find that your 20’s are gone, you have no ‘management’ experience, and companies that are hiring are only looking for ‘junior programmers with 10 years experience’. Then there’s ChatGPT… which I’ve literally heard a manager, a guy that couldn’t figure out how to open a PDF to save his life, say ‘why do we need developers if ChatGPT can write code?’ That’s a whole new thing that’s happening now that I’m not sticking around for.
I personally branched out of programming and got actual experience in Electrical Engineering, and am working on a business degree. Life is better now. I get to touch grass.
I’m telling you this, because after years of working in the industry I can tell you exactly why programmers get paid six figure salaries. You have to sit in one spot for 40-60 hours a week thinking about and solving puzzles that other people just don’t want to. Few people can do this. I’m not kidding when I say I most of my coworkers have some kind of autism or an Adderall addiction. And your bosses won’t appreciate what you do, because they simply won’t understand it.
In a sincere desire to help you not make the mistakes I made, consider front-loading any additional education you might want. Don’t put it off. Push back on working additional unpaid hours. Don’t go in on weekends, or work additional hours. A promotion or pay raise only exists if you have it in your hand. The people at work aren’t your friends, and you don’t owe them anything. You deserve respect.
I don’t mean to scare you off from the field. It has been highly rewarding, and I still love working with computers, but burnout is a very real thing.
All the above is great advice, but I just wanted to add one more thing.
Be absolutely sure you move from one company to another company every couple of years, otherwise your salary will not increase and will instead stagnate, while you burn out.
Not to be too harsh, but welcome to the life of pretty much every other 4 year degree professional.
Cost of college keeps going up, while salary and career prospects continue to decline.
Yeah the working conditions are generally declining, it just sucks somehow the right is gonna say “WELL YOU SHOULD OF STUDIED A HIGH PAYING CAREER”
And they say degrowth can’t happen. It’s already happening if you’re working class.
I wish I could have lived long enough to see Micro$oft go bankrupt and dissolve. They have brought nothing but toxicity to the tech community, and I’ve been in this game for almost 4 decades.
Had a manager try jargon speak on me. He heard it in meetings and thought it sounded smart.
I dispelled him of that illusion.
“Use real words boss. Save that crap for the people who like to talk a lot and tell you nothing.”
Didn’t get a raise, but he started being way more lenient. Always been a Kings Fool.
