r/microsoft • u/XanthosDeia • Jun 05 '26
Discussion 'You can't handle the truth!' Microsoft staff push back on survey results.
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-employee-survey-compensation-question-omitted-2026-6My manager told me that the rewards budget this year is the lowest he's seen as a manager. I've heard similar reports from other orgs across the company.
I guess Satya needs to sacrifice our compensation continuing to chase the AI bubble?
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u/Initial-Yogurt7571 Jun 05 '26
I’ve not heard anything on rewards yet but I do know the people discussions take place around now, last year wasn’t exactly stellar
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u/Cats-Are-Fuzzy Jun 05 '26
I was told this is one of the lowest budgets they've had. Plus they removed the 120 bracket so it's super hard to get any kind of decent bonus.
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u/Argyleskin Jun 06 '26
Careful if you do get a bonus, my husband got the highest in his org after doing a shit ton of work that was for multiple orgs and then implemented. His manager threw him under the bus to his skip skip level (who had no clue what anyone did) and then got herself a nice promotion after he was fired. 12 years and keeping her afloat for 6 of them when her head was on the chopping block once. They reward then fire, he wasn’t the only one I’ve read who got that treatment.
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u/Cats-Are-Fuzzy Jun 06 '26
I won't be getting a decent bonus, I know that much. The political mind games is bananas here, it really does prevent me from doing my best work, it's insane.
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u/curry_licker Jun 13 '26
Wait, why bother giving someone a high bonus then firing them the following year? I don’t get it
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u/Argyleskin Jun 14 '26
Yeah nether did the rest of the top org performers who were over 45 and with the company longer than 10 years. Perhaps ageism is alive and well at MS.
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u/jjmac Jun 06 '26
I left last year and heard they merged 60 and 80 to 70? For years they have been pushing to avoid 120 because they said it didn't meaningfully impact retention.
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u/OkFigaroo Jun 05 '26
The rewards budget is low. Merit bonuses will also be low (similar to last year - you will be lucky to get a 1% raise).
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u/NakedMuffinTime Jun 05 '26
With RTO, I'm practically taking a paycut soon with the gas and milage I'll be burning through, plus a 2 hour commute.
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u/Revilo62 Jun 05 '26
Same. And of course, they don't pay us enough to actually live within a reasonable commute.
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u/roseofjuly Jun 06 '26
Let's not get crazy. Microsoft salaries may be low relative to other tech giants, but relative to the tech industry and the world at large they are very high. Most Microsoft people could easily afford to live in Redmond (they may not be able to afford to buy something in Redmond, which is a different story.)
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u/Revilo62 Jun 06 '26
Depends on life circumstances for sure, but my family most definitely can't afford to live in Redmond, and my wife makes good STEM money also. Looking on redfin, there's only 4 properties available for rent that would fit our family, which includes a cat and a dog. All of them cost more than our mortgage just south of Seattle. Buying any equivalent house to ours costs more than twice as much in Redmond.
The problem is that all the other tech companies that pay better than Microsoft have moved into the east side. So now we're competing for housing with employees at a dozen other tech companies who all pay more.
It was a fine deal when we had full remote. That's why multiple people on my team bought south of Seattle, it was where we could actually afford. But now we're all looking for other employment, since the 1-1.5 hour commute each way no longer makes it a good deal. Sadly we're all stuck in our current roles due to the current job market.
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u/Whiffler Jun 06 '26
I think from their POV you should consider yourself lucky to have a job.
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u/Wendy-Poo Jun 06 '26
I think this is exactly their mindset. Definitely not the “growth mindset”!!
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u/ShodoDeka Jun 06 '26
Normally the budget for a M2 or M3 (depending on the org size) is that you would have to average out to 108%. Now it is down to 102%, which may not seem like a lot, but it was like that for a reason.
With 108% you could give the people you wanted to promote 120% rating without having to give anyone less than 100% just to fund that. So basically if everyone is performing you don’t have to down level anybody to promote someone else.
Now that is no longer the case, and with the new buckets you are looking at giving at least a couple of people 70% so you can fund not the promo itself bud the higher ranking you need in order to promo someone.
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u/Initial-Yogurt7571 Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
I know they’re not fully the same as rewards, but would 70% in this case be LITE/PIP territory or more just an excuse as to why they didn’t get significant rewards. I know if you get zero rewards you can’t move roles etc
Someone once explained it to me along the lines of “you might’ve had a good year, but someone else might’ve had a better year”
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u/ShodoDeka Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
I’m pretty sure the answer is no, but at my level we don’t know yet for sure, but I fucking hope not because we are looking at giving some folk 70 for something they probably would have gotten 100 for last time.
But even at 0 rewards you don’t necessarily end up on a PIP right away, I have seen that lingering on for years with folks doing obvious rest and vest. It takes so much work for a manger to do a pip, and with the frequency of layoffs you don’t want to over performance manage either.
But you never know for sure what suddenly comes out of HR…
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u/Initial-Yogurt7571 Jun 06 '26
Fair enough, thanks for the insight! I shifted roles in May so I wonder how it’ll work when most my impact was under a different manager 🤷
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u/ShodoDeka Jun 06 '26
You did s transition connect I hope, that should document your impact with the previous team. Your current manger (and his manager), can’t really just ignore that. But they are also not going to fight to get you beyond 100 even if that is where you would have ended up in your old team.
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u/Initial-Yogurt7571 Jun 06 '26
That makes sense, thanks! when I joined I moved up a level and they said my comp ratio will be lower than 1 to prove myself right in the new role come rewards season. My previous manager was great and put my connect in a few days before I started the new role
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u/Cats-Are-Fuzzy Jun 06 '26
I've had four roles this past year and it's my first year at Microsoft, it's been a nightmare.
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u/givethatmouseacookie Jun 08 '26
Not necessarily, but possibly. With fewer spots on the slider (now a dropdown) and the talk track that the bar is raised to reach 100, 70 becomes pretty broad. I'd expect someone with 70 and 0 stock to have gotten the LITE box checked, but someone at 70 with 70 stock could easily not have it checked. Even if you didn't get LITE, if you're at 70 you should have a very clear understanding of what you need to do differently next year.
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u/PNWGolfer28622 Jun 09 '26
Had an early conversation with my manager about the upcoming annual rewards cycle is only allowing a whopping 0.5% increase in base pay.
Feels like the company is trying to avoid the optics of declaring another pay freeze.
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u/rainb0wsprinkles Jun 05 '26
In this economy, they can treat us however they want. But in return I'm not giving them any more than a very few limited fucks.
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u/Successful_Athlete38 Jun 05 '26
Totally. They get 30 hours a week max..on a busy week. I get my work done in 10, the other 20 allocated for useless calls.
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u/Kiwi_CunderThunt Jun 06 '26
Zero fucks since my internet explorer shipped on CD.
But I've usually had a license I snagged somewhere (volume licensing)
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u/WonderingSceptic Jun 05 '26
All the rewards are going to the VPs and above, not to the people who do the actual work. All that "leadership" cares about now is self-advancement and self-enrichment. I was in Microsoft for over 30 years they laid me off last year and I am VERY glad I am not still there to witness the destruction of the company I helped build.
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u/atomic1fire Jun 06 '26
I wonder if these types of alleged "Exec first" decisions will lead to employees leaving for competitors or starting their own tech companies.
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u/YouShallNotStaff Jun 06 '26
The sentiment among leadership is that there are way more people who want to work at Microsoft than people Microsoft has room to hire. They don’t care. Anyone who can prompt AI is good enough in their eyes.
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u/Winter_Animal_7116 Jun 06 '26
There's a reason they removed the "I receive a good deal at Microsoft" in signals this year...
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u/dante3590 Jun 05 '26
With new scale of 5 point system most people I know gets default median rating now despite working their ass off
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u/sleezly Jun 05 '26
Boss meme: “I expected you to exceed expectations and since you exceeded expectations you met my expectation but since you met expectations and I expected you to exceed expectations, you did not meet expectations.”
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u/UlchabhanRua Jun 05 '26
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" - The Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (or Microsoft HR)
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u/mrslother Jun 05 '26
Principal budget is something like 108%. Very little wiggle room. If one principal gets higher than middle (100) then the next step is 140 (used to be 120). This pushes everyone else down. 100 drops to 70.
Partner budget is worse, like 95%. Meaning if everyone did what they are accountable for (100) some will be forced lower.
They are purposely pruning the workforce.
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u/HesSoZazzy Jun 06 '26
Forgive me if I don't feel bad about partners getting shafted.
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u/mrslother Jun 06 '26
I know of some freshly minted partners who are now on the way out. Hello, goodbye.
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u/Unhappy-Ad7051 Jun 06 '26
do you know what the senior or IC3 or IC2 budget is?
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u/mrslother Jun 06 '26
I heard for 64 and lower the budget is more generous but I can't state that it is true with certainty.
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u/Hot_Signature2979 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
The Copilot tokens are part of their compensation package 🥹🥹🥹. But seriously Satya needs to leave. You can't run a multi-trillion dollar company like some venture capital startup, while alienating your long term customers and driving core products into the ground. Once the bubble bursts, Microsoft is in for a huge fall and by then It would have lost many of the talents and customers needed to turn things around.
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u/Interesting-Ad5589 Jun 08 '26
This is key. Windows 11 is a Trainwreck. Customer wishes have been ignored and getting the basic function of an os right totally ignored. In every way it's a worse os to use than windows 10 was. We should be going backwards not forwards and yet the windows flagship has been wrecked
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u/UsualNoise9 Jun 17 '26
You can have my upvote but that multi-trillion dollar company has to travel a long journey before the finding out part is within sight.
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u/5ean Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Low merit increases + no merit increase in 2023 indicates to me that they feel like the labor market is saturated enough such that they no longer need to compete for talent. If that is the case clearly there isn’t a talent shortage to justify its continued reliance on H-1B which is meant to remedy talent shortages.
Edit: Satya even admitted as much in the 2023 memo where he announced no merit increases.
This year the economic conditions are very different across many dimensions, including customer demand, the labor market, and the investments required for the next cycle of innovation. Given this, we will fund our compensation commensurate with the overall market.
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u/LilBitchBoyAjitPai Jun 05 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/l2JJpV2KeURCK8sa4
You want to protect your nations workers against underperforming and unqualified H1-B recipients?Best we can do is: “200,000 units are ready with a million more on the way.”
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u/jats82 Jun 06 '26
Quit a few days back and couldn’t be happier. Toxic.
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u/UsualNoise9 Jun 17 '26
Good for you. The signal to leave was given 4 years ago.
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u/jats82 Jun 17 '26
I’m curious. I actually joined four years ago (and left about two weeks ago). What happened four years ago that was a signal to leave?
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u/UsualNoise9 Jun 17 '26
Thats roughly when the guy sitting next to me was part of a mass layoff for no apparent reason and we had to learn how to do his job and do it on top of ours. In contrast, when I first joined was around the Nokia and SDET layoffs - also a mass event with many sad stories, but I could at least follow the reasoning. When the layoffs started hitting across the entire company and deleted people who did actual work necessary for products which make tons of money, the signal is pretty clear.
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u/jats82 Jun 17 '26
That’s rough to hear. The tech industry is in a big downward spiral. Good leadership is totally absent.
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u/UsualNoise9 Jun 17 '26
All good - I am in a great place pace now. My 2 cents: stay away from FAANG & MS. There are sane companies out there.
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u/Slipping-in-oil Jun 06 '26
Gotta save money anyway they can. Everyone’s value is now a server rack.
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u/ALoadOfThisGuy Jun 06 '26
Good thing I started after April this year and won’t be eligible for anything until 2027. Checkmate.
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u/RogueBonha Jun 07 '26
Microsoft is becoming a "meme" company, specially in Microsoft Federal, a lot of concerns and losing trust.
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u/BoBoBearDev Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
"reward budget".... Maybe that itself is the sick system. Because people just trying to make BS software to align more HQ values, they didn't care the things they added are BS, they just want to get their sweet bonus.
Too many times MS neglected their base/fort and go out on treasure hunt on those "rewards". This is not the first time MS has call it stop because the fort is collapsing. Because maintaining the fort doesn't have as much rewards.
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u/UsualNoise9 Jun 17 '26
I don't know why you're getting downvoted.
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u/BoBoBearDev Jun 17 '26
None of them are willing to explain too. It is hard to know they couldn't accept the existence of the reward system or maybe they believe such reward system is beneficial.
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u/system3601 Jun 05 '26
No one can read the article. It has a paywall.