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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?
Because it is about salaries at a tech company. What could be more relevant to Slashdotters, other than maybe the cost of renting a basement?
I am surprised Microsoft is publicizing this. They are hurting recruitment by broadcasting that they have crappy pay, and raising expectations of salary increases among existing employees.
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.
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.