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Internal Microsoft Poll Shows Employees Are Less Satisfied With Pay (cnbc.com)
According to an annual companywide survey, obtained by CNBC, Microsoft employees said they're less fairly paid in 2018 than they were in any of the past three years. When asked if "total compensation (base pay, bonus, equity) is competitive compared to similar jobs at other companies," only 61 percent said it was, down from 65 percent in 2017 and 67 percent each of the two prior years. From the report: Additionally, just 62 percent of the employees agreed that "people are rewarded according to their job performance," down from 63 percent last year and 64 percent in 2016. Those two questions received some of the lowest scores on the survey. The company said that 86 percent of Microsoft's employees participated. The results, shared by Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan in April, are a further indication of the challenge that Microsoft and other tech companies face in hiring and retaining top talent. Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, is just a few miles from Amazon's home and isn't far from the Seattle offices of Google, Facebook and a growing number of start-ups. Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan said the company takes the issue "seriously," and that it will work to ensure a more balanced pay structure.
Why is this even news? Soon Slashdot will be featuring articles about clothes and fashion tips.
I take the public comments of a CPO seriously, just like the Chief Marketing Officer and pretty much anything C-level. Their words are always given in utmost earnesty.
This is what Github employees, now Microsoft employees have to look forward to.
They see the Amazon.com brogrammers living fat in downtown Seattle with their amazing stock equity.
Back in the late 90s, anyone who had a passing familiarity with computers was commanding a huge salary regardless of talent. I'm sure Microsoft is in an arms race with Amazon and Google these days. All three companies are going at a breakneck pace trying to develop new cloud services or make the ones they already run cheaper to run. The race is on to lock as many customers into their cloud provider as they can because no one is buying software licenses anymore.
What's interesting is that with everything moving to the cloud, these 3 companies and a few others will probably be the chief consumers of developer and infrastructure engineering talent. And at least in previous years, Microsoft selected for highly talented people and paid enough to ensure they didn't run off to a competitor. I've worked with people who've been at Microsoft for 20+ years...if you're really talented they do a lot to keep you. I think this is why that survey result is surprising.
We'll see what happens in a couple years. I'm betting a huge chunk of cloud consumption is startups selling bags of dog food and AI-powered, IoT driven, blockchain-enabled subscription boxes online. When that goes away, people are still going to use AWS/Azure/GCP, but I just don't think they'll get the stupid levels of revenue they're getting today from the VC money.
Its not just tech, lot's pf people surveyed think their job is worthy of more money. It's that old saying "the grass is always greener" this is what people are always searching for. Only so much a company can do to keep people, in the end some people will leave thinking the pastures are greener elsewhere.
NO PAY FOR YOU! hahahahaha
About the time I left (~5 years ago) pay was starting to stagnate and become much less competitive. Older more experienced folks were pushed out and the youngins' are happy with the free rides around campus/perks/quality of life stuff with terrible pay. It really is a race to the bottom at that company as no one I know that is REALLY good at their job still works there.
One thing is pay, another thing is that as more people move in to attractive areas living expenses skyrocket.
Perspective from inside: it sometimes feels like advancement is based more on time put in than than value delivered, up until a certain level at least. Some of the smartest, most productive people in the world are here but then there are entire teams that you can’t figure out what they do. This is very frustrating at lower levels because it can feel like no matter how well you perform you are going to advance at only a slightly faster pace than people who are just coasting. Thankfully I love what I work on and get paid well to do it
low pay = more H1B's that locked to the job and will do 80+ hours a week so they don't kicked out the USA.
low pay = more H1B's that locked to the job and will do 80+ hours a week so they don't kicked out the USA.
It's kind of weird actually. Back in the British Colonial times, English companies went to India to exploit the workers there.
Now the workers from India come to the US voluntarily to be exploited there.
Lazy American companies! They can't even be bothered to travel abroad to exploit folks!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Only the privileged 1% are happy with their pay, the other 99% aren't. Seriously, is /. using The Onion for news sources?
but it's ok to get rich while most people in the world don't have adequate capital to live or prosper, after all, what's a few billion poor kids more or less, just so long as the rich can get richer, greed knows no limits, denial is rampant and this is the age of entitlement and selfishness, fuck the consequences and the environment, after all it's ok because our wealth makes us immune from ethical issues and thank goodness we all live in the first world, where our special rights are protected so we can screw everybody else
That " anonymous " survey they took is anything but. ( Like the ones my own company demands we take annually asking how amazing we think the company is )
They way they'll " fix " the pay problem is to fire all those who are complaining about the pay. Next survey will show a dramatic increase in the number of " happy " employees who think their pay is too generous.
Because of this amazing turn around, some high level executive will get an amazing bonus for doing such a great job for corporate morale !
Pay H1Bs as much as their competitors. If they are just as skilled as those who they replace and Microsoft just can't find any Americans to do the job then it means that Microsoft is just being racist by paying H1Bs less.
Now the workers from India come to the US voluntarily to be exploited there.
No. The workers from India come to the US voluntarily to exploit the companies.
There is a lot of dead wood in IT who basically get paid what i call 'appearance money' to show up. Most teams are held together by one or two switched on people who do all the work and are well paid. The 'dead wood; then complain they don't get paid enough as others in the team and complain they want equal pay and titles etc.
What? People are unsatisfied because they're being asked obviate the need for their skillset by being made to train some pennies-on-the-dollar cubicle farmer to do everything they're paid a fair wage to do, then getting laid off?
Hell, if I knew my employer were trying to do that, *I* would be unsatisfied with my pay too.
Since my pay is balanced against where I live and how I live. And the fact that I'm going to have to make savings stretch when they, inevitably, let me go.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Microsoft expects people to take a pay cut for the privilege of working at the company; meanwhile people are leaving Microsoft and starting companies that do nothing but staffing for Microsoft and making more.
Microsoft has several problems; They don't pay market wages, they are not willing to pay over market wages to keep people if google or amazon is willing to, and they are addicted to screwing over contractors who really are perma-temps no matter what rules they put in place.
I have a friend who works at Microsoft. In the mid 2000s, after Microsoft stock had been stagnant for years, he said that Microsoft was trying to increase their salaries to make up for the fact that the stock was a poor performer. I guess now that their stock has been skyrocketing the last few years, they want more stock instead of a good salary.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
does not make up for that spying on people feeling.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
now microsoft employees know how every woman in the engineering field feels
We have employee engagement surveys every years to show things like this. And invariably the make serious noises about problem areas, but no follow-up ever happens on them if they involve compensation (including costs of health care and other perks in addition salary), or lack of faith in senior management.
Where the numbers are good they wave them like a flag and give pats on the back (but nothing more tangible).
Now where it gets interesting is when you don't look at it monolithically. We would use an outside company to do this, and even though I am sure many employees didn't believe this, they would only deliver results in aggregate, with a minimum number of respondents to make it hard to determine any one employee's answer. But those are still interesting. When you have one team with vastly different scores then related teams, good or bad, you can take a look at what is different.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.