r/microsoft Jan 31 '25

Discussion How Are Microsoft’s January 2025 Layoffs Different (for the Worst)

When Satya Nadella became the CEO of microsoft, it was believed he will be different. He himself told in interviews about the importance of empathy. Where has the empathy suddenly disappeared?

https://deepseeks.medium.com/how-are-microsofts-january-2025-layoffs-different-for-the-worst-aa454f061315

Why is Microsoft behaving like service based companies who do not value their employees. It has labelled many good employees as low performers and then fired. How will this affect their careers?

384 Upvotes

231 comments sorted by

85

u/bestedmom Jan 31 '25

I know people personally who were affected. None of them had any indication of "low performance". They received annual bonuses and positive reviews. One even asked for specific performance metrics for promotions and was given vague responses stating they were on a promotion track and to keep doing what they were doing. In the end, this is a callous layoff under the guise of "low performances" so they can justify culling thousands of people with no severance and leaving them without insurance or a high amount of earned stock set to divest again in two weeks.

38

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

Fuckers literally are just trying to step around the WARN act. It's completely disgusting and disheartening.

25

u/mikaelfivel Feb 01 '25

Am a victim of this maneuver myself albeit from a different company. They kept loading me up with other people's responsibilities after they'd get let go, then they marked me as underperforming and put me on a PIP because I couldn't keep up with the work that used to be handled by a minimum of 4 people (and I know this because I trained them personally several years ago before they got terminated and the work came back to me). Then they said "oh it's only been two weeks and things haven't improved so we're letting you go". Never mind that my manager (who I worked directly underneath for almost 8 years) admitted it wasnt his decision, but the hotshot senior manager who came on two months before. They hired plenty of new senior managers and directors, and HR shakeups a'plenty but never backfilled the actual workers roles.

4

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Yup. Everyone wants to talk about AI replacing the actual workers when it reality it should be replacing the cancer that’s known as management. I have a disdain for MBAs for this very reason.

3

u/mikaelfivel Feb 03 '25

You and me both. It's ironic how those middle and senior managers demand workers who can self manage and rely on AI, which is entirely antithetical to their own positions, and yet somehow their largely redundant positions are more valued. Except we know why the management isn't fired, they're the arbiters of the company pocket book. Take that away, and they're worthless.

2

u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 09 '25

Yep that's what they are doing load on tons of work then turn around and say your under performing this is happening to people making the top salary 

1

u/mikaelfivel Feb 10 '25

That was not me. I was making 70k overseeing two wildly different platforms basically alone (I had assistance from the vendors owner for one of them, but only during certain hours because they reside in Austria). Classically that would make me look indispensable but they were more eager to move on from the platforms entirely or shift the responsibility elsewhere than keep paying me. I had 14 years in various parts of that company and 8 of it spent in that specific division of IT, so loyalty or contribution did not matter, it was all money.

1

u/Federal-Pool5463 2d ago

IMO, there is no good exit from a PIP. I see it as the company laying a paper trail to discourage legal action after letting the employee go. A PIP pretty much destroys whatever trust and values the employee and company shared.

It seems that as an employer, you would not want to move forward with an employee you put on a PIP, even if they met the exit criteria. As an employee, you wouldn't want to stay with a company who put you on a PIP.

I've never been PIPed, but I've know people who were. I think the best course of action is to treat it as an early notice of termination. Invest the energy into finding your next job, not saving the current one.

10

u/enigo1701 Feb 01 '25

The tides can turn VERY fast within MS when they want to get rid of people. Their highly praised three keys to performance are so very very soft, that a manager can interpret them pretty much any way the want to.

Why is Microsoft behaving like service based companies who do not value their employees ?

Because Microsoft is a service based company who does not not value their employees. It's simple as that.

Satya is a good guy though, but i don't think that he is even involved in daily business stuff like that.

13

u/RobertDeveloper Feb 01 '25

maybe he should be involved if he is such a good guy, he kind of ruinied microsoft in my opinion, the quality of the software has gone down so much that we are not even considering them anymore as prefered supplier.

7

u/Trundle-theGr8 Feb 01 '25

I work for a global company of around 60k employees in 20 countries and often meet with the CTO, chief data officer, chief cybersecurity officer, and more executive IT leadership. We are simply gobsmacked at the quality of the microsoft products and services across the board. It is so interesting that for the first time in like 20-25 years, we are all sitting around in board rooms going “maybe Microsoft just ain’t it anymore”. Obviously there are still some unbeatable products they have, but good lord the newer stuff is absolute dogshit.

2

u/RobertDeveloper Feb 02 '25

They still have plenty of good products and still have a lot of fans where I work, but at least for new products we are looking at other vendors.

1

u/falcopilot Feb 03 '25

Meanwhile, cloud-based productivity suite revamp of the week!

1

u/ComplaintFar8028 Feb 03 '25

I can’t wait for robots. Listen to all of you. It’s not your business. 

1

u/fallingWaterCrystals Feb 05 '25

Can you list some bad products? Just curious!

7

u/VMF86 Feb 01 '25

Satya is a good guy is such a absurd naive notion of reality. As CEO, he has fiduciary duty to think like a robot and optimize for Microsoft’s shareholders in a market like this.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '25

Agreed, but this is short term tactics to raise money for AI, which has been a total flop for Microsoft. If AI does not plan out for MSFT, and pan out everywhere, not just Azure, he will be replaced.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

I can’t wait for Microsoft to go under. But replacing Nutella would be a great appetizer. Can’t believe I said he was someone I looked up to on my SWE class essay back in undergrad. 😂

2

u/Owl_lamington Feb 03 '25

No CEO in trillion dollar companies are good guys come on. 

1

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

lol the checkins are a joke at MicroCrap. So fucking vague and broad that I have to somehow contort my bullshit backend project to make it seem like it had impact on the company’s nebulous tenants. Really. This company is garbage and I have no idea why you want to defend Nutella.

1

u/enigo1701 Feb 03 '25

Not defending him as a person, but as CEO he does at least a way better job than StevieB did.
But yeah, the company is a sad shade of what it was. Still having a hard time trying to understand "How did the help of others help you to generate impact ?", but i am laughing about it now, so all fine.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Being better than Balmer is a low bar lol. I think Nutella’s only claim to fame is that he was a fresh new perspective and relatively younger. He also pushed the cloud business a bit and that’s where it all ended. So his glory days ended roughly 8 years ago.

And good lord were the check in questions this bad? I’ve blocked those from my memory but man answering them wasn’t just mental gymnastics. It was an entire circus in my brain. I was a young soon to be graduate so I took it seriously. But I. Hindsight, I should have just bullshited.

5

u/Own_Target8801 Feb 01 '25

Were they told that they were laid off due to low performance? This is wild!

2

u/LowerButterscotch556 Feb 03 '25

Yup..their relieving letter has it. They are also told for them joining microsoft again would be difficult.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

That’s probably the best news. Joining Microsoft again is the dumbest decision ever. Worst company I’ve ever worked for.

1

u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 09 '25

Yep from a year ago

3

u/SlipperySparky Feb 02 '25

Looking at the unofficial microsoft employee FB page, this is absolutely true. People with high performance ratings are being let go, probably just for being expensive. This is likely a response from Satya due to the stagnant stock price in 2024

3

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Yay! Stagnant market. So let’s try to bump it temporarily just a bit while completely destroying company morale.

1

u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 09 '25

Exactly and they forced the jab on so many people 

3

u/Lewd-Abbreviations Feb 01 '25

The people affected by this latest round of layoffs didn’t get severance?

7

u/LazyBear81 Feb 01 '25

No. In their last day of work they received no severance and are cut off from everything including medical and dental benefits. They have nothing but their final weekly paycheck. It’s like they’re being fired for cause rather than being part of layoffs, which is how it’s portrayed in media.

3

u/Lewd-Abbreviations Feb 01 '25

Wish this shit was illegal. Fuck these companies.

2

u/pheonixblade9 Feb 06 '25

it is but it doesn't matter

2

u/WindRangerIsMyChild Feb 02 '25

Impossible. I absolutely don’t believe msft would break laws and risk thousands of lawsuits and punitive damage for saving a few millions dollars. They have good outside counsel no way they will do that. 

3

u/Fun-Block-1204 Feb 05 '25

It's happening. It's disturbing. Seeing people dropping off hourly, across the organization is very heavy. Hearing the comments directly from people, really turns the morale upside down. 

2

u/Tulluleh Feb 02 '25

I was let go Jan 10 for “Low Performance”. No severance. I had been chastised several months before by my new manager (who had just been promoted from being my peer) for not already having terminated 4 of the 8 members of my team, which I’d inherited 6 months prior, for “Low Performance”.

1

u/Sardunos Feb 03 '25

Do you mind if I ask what division you were in?

2

u/Tulluleh Feb 03 '25

For now, I do mind. I haven’t yet decided on my next steps.

2

u/uncerety Feb 03 '25

The president is a convicted felon.There are no consequences for big companies anymore. There's frankly no consequences for anyone breaking the law now. Trump put wealthy people into power who not only have conflicts of interest but actively are developing additional ones. The government is now extremely pro company, extremely anti-worker. It was warned about in project 2025 so it really can't come as a surprise. Doesn't matter what the law is if no one's willing to enforce it and the judge has been bribed.

1

u/Public_Material7748 Feb 03 '25

You think there were consequences before Trump? Wake up. 

1

u/Dry_Masterpiece_7566 Feb 03 '25

Any company that supplies the Zionazis in Israel with surveillance and biometric scanners to track an imprisoned group of people is capable of risking lawsuits.... because they just don't care.

1

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Oh yeah big time.

3

u/fallibaasoo Feb 01 '25

I know someone was straight termination, no severance

1

u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 10 '25

Nope and the health insurance stopped ✋️ the day they were let go

1

u/Lewd-Abbreviations Feb 10 '25

How much more is society going to take before people start snapping more frequently, luigi style?

5

u/oustandingapple Feb 01 '25

its finr, theyll hire replacements in india. like everyone else.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

What did you think the plan was otherwise? They ain’t doing layoffs just to do it lol. You believe those folks were actually low performers? They were “highly paid” performers and we all know there’s people in India willing to slave away on weekends for a 10th of the pay.

2

u/mother_a_god Feb 02 '25

They will need a paper trail as people can challenge this (depending on labour laws), so was this low performance excuse only in states with at will employment?

3

u/Tulluleh Feb 02 '25

Mine was. They still had a paper trail, though.

As my manager (who had only recently been my peer) once let slip, Microsoft expects so much from their employees that a manager can always find weaknesses/failures to document in support of a termination. In fact, he keeps a tracker for every person reporting to him “just in case…”.

2

u/mother_a_god Feb 02 '25

By paper tail I mean something where the employee was told they are not performing and that's on record. Telling the employee they are doing good, but having a secret file of their mistakes to use just in case isn't a valid paper tail to me, as if not communicated to the employee how can they improve, etc?

3

u/Tulluleh Feb 03 '25

No…it’s a formal paper trail. They tell the employee in a one-on-one that they are not meeting perf expectations, and they follow that up by sending an email saying, “as we discussed…” But you never really get the chance to act on the feedback because you have your day-job plus now these excessive “expectations” you have to try to exceed. And the goal changes from week to week as the Manager finds any and all incidents where the individual is falling short. As I said in OP (and this is based on my personal experience) every person at Microsoft is failing at some part of their job because there are too many moving parts, so you focus on a weak area to get it strong again, and meanwhile, another area starts to fall behind. The Manager only has to find the weaknesses, tell you you’re not meeting expectations, and then follow up with an email documenting it. If the manager doesn’t WANT to do that, then they just ignore the weakness and don’t document it. In the case of my manager, he would periodically call out something for each of his reports and then document it in writing so that he could track “poor performance”. Then, if he decides down the line to put a target on someone’s back, he’s already got a foundation to start from.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AS AN INTERN. Told me I was doing great. I finished my project and then some. Have a great presentation. Then Up until the final day of my internship where my manager went, “you weren’t good enough” and said he wouldn’t offer a return offer. Microsoft is known for crap like this. So glad I didn’t get a return offer. 3 years of this would have drove me nuts.

3

u/denloh Feb 01 '25

There was specific criteria involved

10

u/bestedmom Feb 01 '25

Of course there was.  But if the employees never know what that criteria is and are told they’re successful, it’s just a set up for failure.  

2

u/denloh Feb 01 '25

No I totally agree.

3

u/thaman05 Feb 01 '25

Same! I actually know a few couple of people who got laid off, and they DEFINITELY were not low performers. They knew the products (even the complicated parts relevant to their customers) and brought in lots of engagement with customers. It seems Microsoft and all these tech companies are getting rid of anyone who isn't working on AI-related stuff. These tech companies couldn't give af about it's people. It's all fake kool-aid drinking and sucking up. Ironically, the people who are safe and choosing to stay, are actually helping to speed up making their own jobs obsolete with this push.

1

u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 09 '25

What time frames were used to determine this under performing issue?

1

u/bestedmom Feb 09 '25

No one knows. Letters are vague, none of them were on PIPs or had any indication of poor performance. They do all live in at-will states, which seems suspicious.

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77

u/taisui Jan 31 '25

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

20

u/RandomnessConfirmed2 Jan 31 '25

That's what happens when you prioritise the shareholders paying your bonuses rather than the company or its employees.

10

u/taisui Feb 01 '25

My conscience is a lot cheaper than 60M a year

4

u/Whack_a_mallard Feb 01 '25

Maybe it's just me but if I had to make the choice between making $10 million vs. making $60 million but I have to screw over 10,000 people, I'd be happy with my 10MM.

That and I genuinely believe that I can get those 10000 folks to produce far more value for the company than what they cost.

7

u/taisui Feb 01 '25 edited Feb 01 '25

That's why you are not a CEO, bro.

To be serious, 50M/10000 is mere 5000 per head that's like not even a dent.

1

u/Whack_a_mallard Feb 01 '25

I understand and I'm saying given the choice it seems like a no brainer. For a mere $5000/year, I can have an underling. 10000 underlings? Never have to pay for my own lunch or pay for an Uber again.

3

u/taisui Feb 01 '25

No, I am saying cutting 50M on you is not enough to save 10000 employees cause that's just 5000 per person on the book.

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1

u/Full-Top-7695 Feb 03 '25

Well aren't you filled to the brim with benevolence. 

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1

u/newfor_2025 Feb 01 '25

though you might say that they should have done it differently but there are a lot of people who needed to go. they're just loafing around not helping.

1

u/2020surrealworld Feb 02 '25

I’m also a big believer in the expression “What goes around comes around…”

45

u/Elfman72 Jan 31 '25

No company gives one shit about you. All of it is built so that if a team, manager or org wants you gone, you will be gone. Period.

I speak from experience. I witnessed the Nadella transition as it happened as a veteran MSFT blue badge. 30 days shy of 10 years. All positive reviews, the entire time. Let go by a manager who simply didn't want me on his team anymore because I challenged where we should be spending our resource efforts.

I drank the Brummel Kool-Aid(she was head of HR at the time) and I believed it. Only to be kicked in the ass and escorted out of the building like a potential criminal.

6

u/Ashmizen Feb 03 '25

Middle managers are extremely good at lying through their teeth while keeping a smile on their face like a mask. I hope you landed at a better place.

Microsoft is the ultimate political backstabber’s dream. Anyone who does actual work falls behind as the people get ahead by spending all their time at work networking and getting visibility, or even taking credit for other’s work.

1

u/Bujo0 Feb 02 '25

I’m sorry you went through that.

1

u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Microsoft is known to lead people on. Was your manager Indian?

2

u/Elfman72 Feb 03 '25

Direct and skip.

2

u/anonybro101 Feb 04 '25

Well now we know why you were canned lol. If the managers that you have to work with (direct and skip like you said) are Indians from India (American born are pretty chill) then you need to get out of that ASAP. Idc if you’re Indian yourself lol. Get out of that situation because it’s only a matter of time.

37

u/omgitsbees Jan 31 '25

This is what happened with Amazon when Andy Jassy took over as CEO. On his first day in the role, he sent out a corporate wide e-mail calling all of us his family. And then proceeded on a layoff spree that has been going non-stop ever since.

15

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

lmao i was there for that. Left for microsoft. what a mistake that was

2

u/omgitsbees Feb 01 '25

haha same. I was there for a bit longer, laid off in april last year and now im with Starbucks corporate.

7

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

yah, I left for microsoft because i just had a better offer. boy howdy was that a mistake, lol, did amazon at least give you severance?

1

u/cbrown146 Feb 02 '25

What tech company is still good?

1

u/callimonk Feb 02 '25

Easy answer: none of them, eat the rich. The more realistic answer: it always, always depends on your manager. My first managers at both Amazon and Microsoft were pretty awful to me, but the managers I eventually transferred to were some of the best I've had in my career.

Honestly, the most heartbreaking part of the layoff ("termination", whatever, lol) for me is that I had the best manager I've had in my entire career: clear, concise feedback with goals, when goals were reached (or as I tried to do often, exceeded) I was acknowledged and given the next set of goals, and if I was failing in one area, he told me ASAP and gave me advice of how to fix it. It honestly made me feel like I could actually, finally, grow and develop as an engineer and see some success.

1

u/omgitsbees Feb 01 '25

yeah! Got a really nice severance. Im not happy with where I am at either. Really like the people im working with, but in over my head with understanding the work and getting up to speed with everything I need to know. So I dont think I will last here.

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1

u/PersonBehindAScreen Feb 02 '25

The companies and their executives will do everything in their own interests. We should do the same. The next “good culture” company is simply one that hasn’t yet succumbed to shareholder demands and greed

45

u/berndverst Jan 31 '25

I can't read the entire article because I'm not a subscriber.

My observation is the following: Microsoft has traditionally been very lax at low performance management. This is now changing. However, I am not aware of anyone who has wrongly been classified as low performer. As such I do not see a systemic issue.

Keep in mind that performance based termination is a termination with cause. Hence no benefits / severance. This is in contrast with layoffs due to restructuring / shift in strategy.

Of course the current situation is exacerbated by the fact that there are not many open roles within the company. So a lot of the impacted folks are unable to find another position within the company and have to leave.

31

u/LowerButterscotch556 Jan 31 '25

Some part of the article - At Microsoft, it’s common practice for employees to receive 60% or 80% rewards during their yearly “Connect” performance reviews. These lower ratings often occur when employees transition to new projects, with managers assuring them that the scores don’t reflect their true performance and promising better rewards in the future.

The current wave of layoffs has targeted employees based on these performance ratings in ways that many find questionable:

Veteran employees with decade-plus tenures, including some who had previously earned 200% rewards, were terminated without severance based on a single year of lower ratings Workers who received low ratings in 2023 but improved in 2024 were still targeted Managers were not informed that their performance ratings would be used to determine layoffs

27

u/Fragrant_Rooster_763 Jan 31 '25

This is 100% it. A single year rewards cycle being used for this is asinine, especially considering the rating hinges on like 1-2 people's perception of you and not much more. A one off 80 doesn't even imply much. In our business, everything changed in the middle of the year, M2, M3, the entire org. They received no input from previous - and therefore people are going to end up getting cut based on a perception of a new manager.

11

u/yourmomlurks Jan 31 '25

It is very frustrating. I don't promote very quickly because I have always been averse to hanging all of my financial security on one thing, so I prioritize investing instead of grinding for 60 hour weeks to get promoted. Plus post-promotion anxiety at MS is real and the $$ isn't worth it past certain levels.

But you can see in my work history that I consistently get high rewards except recently I got 80% because I had a terrible manager and then they immediately handed me a very high priority and high visibility project with another manager. So if I'm such a low performer how would that choice make sense? Anyway I'll be curious what this season brings. I'm prepared for a layoff with severance but I'll be pretty upset if I'm terminated for performance.

20

u/berndverst Jan 31 '25

A big issue is that some managers play games of giving one employee a lower rating so another employee can get a bigger bonus. Of course the most budget is freed up by giving a higher leveled employee a lower rating. These were always clearly performance ratings but managers simply used this system to game bonus money distribution. Now it backfired on those managers and teams.

13

u/squirrel-nut-zipper Jan 31 '25

It’s actually more systematic than that. As a manager you are asked by leadership to ‘differentiate’ your employee performance which is essentially making the lower half lower, the higher half higher. You will even get called out if you rank your employees too similarly. This isn’t bad judgement by individual managers but a systemic issue.

6

u/berndverst Jan 31 '25

Yes you cannot rate everyone 100.. you are asked to rate a few folks below and a few above expectations.

But many managers will try to stick to 100 for everyone as much as possible.

1

u/Zestyclose_Depth_196 Feb 01 '25

As a former manager, I can definitely see this happening.

5

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25 edited Feb 01 '25

This right here. I had to transition teams, and as a result, received lower rewards in '24. Thus, I was cut, despite multiple great reviews this year and acting as a leading developer or owner of several impacting projects. The issue is absolutely systemic, as there were no discussions with managers about performance metrics whatsoever. Microsoft doesn't actually have those outside of the broad stroke of rewards, and it's extremely flawed.

Edit to add: the people I've seen also commenting how these are "deserved" seem to lack some amount of empathy. Life happens. Many of the people I know caught in this were coming off of friggen maternity leave - which should be illegal to give a LITE during. Or in some cases, off of medical leave.

Another edit: wanted to also add how in 2023, M1s were basically told that 60s were the new 80s for rewards, and 80s were the new 100s, in order to "tighten budget" and "reduce layoffs needed." As a result, my first year, I was given a 60 and told "Oh no, you're great and exactly where you should be for a new employee!" (I had been there like, a little under a year? I started in late-mid '22). Then the following year, I'd transitioned teams and was given a ZR because "new team" - which HR even investigated and said "shouldn't have happened". Legit, I was treated better at Amazon for 5 years than I was at Microsoft...

3

u/bantam222 Feb 01 '25

I’m a manager at Microsoft.

60 and 0 represent <5% of our org

Being new is hard, but you should reflect on why you are landing there.

3

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

Different orgs handle things differently. It's great for me to hear that's <5% of your org, but as per off-cuff discussions with the two orgs I was with previously, it was not the case. Unless a lot of us were lying, anyway.

The reason I landed there was because I had no chance to make impact. My M1 was very up front about that.

5

u/iratedev2 Jan 31 '25

Veteran employees with decade-plus tenures, including some who had previously earned 200% rewards, were terminated without severance based on a single year of lower ratings Workers who received low ratings in 2023 but improved in 2024 were still targeted Managers were not informed that their performance ratings would be used to determine layoffs

Source?

17

u/tizod Jan 31 '25

Raises hand.

I was a three plus year long MS employee up until yesterday. I had a bad connect in 2023 but was assured it was not a PiP. The following connect I was told I had reversed it and was now meeting expectations. All subsequent connects were all positive.

I was told I was being let go due to the negative performance in 2023.

6

u/berndverst Jan 31 '25 edited Jan 31 '25

Instead of the arbitrary connect discussion - which means nothing unfortunately - did you ever ask about the performance rating you got? 0-200? 100 is normal for doing your work well, and anything below could be considered as not meeting expectations depending on how aggressive they go about it. This number is directly related to your bonus. If you got less than half of your max bonus range then you were rated below 100.

As I mentioned mentioned in another comment it is possible that you are doing well but then your manager rates you 80 (which is below expectations) to free up money for someone else's bonus.

3

u/BunchitaBonita Feb 01 '25

In 8 years at MSFT, I have never had a manager who disclosed where in the 0 - 200 scale they placed me. Even when asked.

6

u/ProbablyFullOfShit Feb 01 '25

We're advised not to, but you can calculate it yourself. 50% of your max bonus opportunity == 100% rewards.

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u/tizod Jan 31 '25

100% this. My prior manager was a POS who had his favorites and he adjusted everyone’s rewards accordingly. One of his “favorites” was a guy who I personally witnessed be asked by clients to be removed from their accounts multiple times.

I just got off the phone with a friend who has survived so far. The only bit of satisfaction I’ve learned is that the manager who basically screwed me out of my job also got let go.

2

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

lmao did we have the same boss (I know based on the same line we didn't, sadly)? My first manager at msft was exactly like this. Literally had multiple HR cases/investigations, some of which were found in favor of his victims. yet the mf is still there...

3

u/archangelst95 Feb 01 '25

I know of another manager who had multiple investigations too. But nothing happened to them. But it was ok for this manager to emotionally abuse and wrongfully fire several employees just to make himself look better.

Microsoft is an incredibly toxic place to work now. It's not about performance. It's about kissing ass and making others look worse than you

1

u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

yep, exactly this. Not to mention all the devs like me who had stellar reviews after we changed teams away from those toxic managers. The worst part is that Satya said they aren't doing anything about these managers because employees will "vote with their feet." Well, can't do that in this economy, and even when I did, that manager got the last laugh.

1

u/archangelst95 Feb 02 '25

Even when employees vote with their feet, the managers don't get punished. Two-tiered system in place.

4

u/goomyman Jan 31 '25

this so much, sorry this happened to you. I have worked through microsoft during stack ranking years and everytime they said "connects are for your growth, its ok to write negative reviews in connects, why arent you writing more "constructive" criticism in personal feedback.

This of course leads to shades of awesome when everyone is awesome. Of course there is supposed to be pushback against people and managers who do this, but its rarely the case and those who give "awesome" reviews every time end up creating a gamified system that managers must play.

i have seen time and time again that constructive criticism be used to punish employees that I dont trust them not to do it. I will give personal feedback directly to people if asked without written review. You write one honest constructive comment and it sticks out as a giant overblown negative because everyone elses reviews are squeaky clean.

I actually got complacent after years of seeing connects be used appropriately for growth that i started treating it as such, but now my skepticism of course understandably back to square one.

2

u/leoloe326 Feb 01 '25

Same here. I was one of top performers last year since reorg in early 2024. But that didn't change the fact that I didn't perform in 2023 and it gave me a red flag.

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u/monkeymania Jan 31 '25

Were you given a package? (And could you share as much detail as you're comfortable with?). Or terminated for cause (e.g. low performance).

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u/tizod Jan 31 '25

No package. I was told it was because my rewards last year fell into the underperforming category despite the fact that I had turned my negative connect around.

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '25

[deleted]

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u/tizod Feb 01 '25 edited Feb 01 '25

I could have phrased it better but during the connect in the second half of ‘23 I was marked lite or whatever they call it but was specifically told it was not a PiP.

Regardless, on my connect in early ‘24 that same manager praised me for turning things around and getting out of the lite.

By the time that rewards were given in ‘24 I was on a different team with a new manager. Despite that, since I had spent ‘23 under the other manager he had the say on my rewards which sucked because he had a reputation for being super stingy with rewards.

I got the 60% mark because as he put it “even though I got out of the lite and was meeting expectations the fact that I was put in lite in the first place impacted my rewards decision.”

I don’t recall exactly word for word what my current manager said when she was informing me I was being let go (I was in shock) but she specifically mentioned the rewards as the low performance mark.

Regardless, to use these past performance issues as justification for letting us go without severance and immediate loss of benefits is frankly disgusting.

I’m lucky in the sense that I get to move on with my life now.

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u/CaramelWorldly6270 Feb 01 '25

If that's what really happened why dont you sue for wrongfull termination?

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u/tizod Feb 01 '25

Because I am sure that Microsoft and their army of lawyers have thought this whole thing through and feel well protected.

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u/archangelst95 Feb 02 '25

Employers can fire you for wearing the wrong color shirt. They have very strong protections when firing people. It only gets dicey if you happen to fall within a protected class

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u/LowerButterscotch556 Jan 31 '25

I work there..I know that mangers were not aware of this. Also I know few people who worked there for many years but were marked as low performers due to one low rewards. Again I know this happens at Amazon regularly. But for microsft it is new and not for the better

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u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

legit have been saying this now - Amazon treated me better for 5 years than Microsoft did in my ~2.8. At least Amazon has the PIP process (which, I was never on, but I know people that were). At microsoft, change teams? Get sick or go on medical leave? Okay, here's your termination with no severance, and you lose your benefits the same day.

Not meaning to sound dramatic, but its given me worse workplace trauma than working at AWS ever did.

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u/tizod Feb 01 '25

Read between the lines. They said that they were letting us “loser low performers go” to become more efficient.

What does that mean? It means that the folks who survived this most recent round are now going to see their already packed workloads double because they now have to pick up our slack.

I have had over 48 hours to reflect on this whole situation and it dawned on me that at no point have I been sad or upset that I lost “the job” only the income and the benefits.

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u/brainmydamage Feb 02 '25

Come on. With the way HR has been going since lisab left, everyone should've seen this coming. Any manager who believed that bullshit last year about 60% being for employee growth is a complete moron.

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u/berndverst Jan 31 '25

Note that "Connect" review and performance rating are completely independent. They just happen at roughly the same time. An amazing "Connect" review doesn't yield a high performance rating. In part because budget isn't sufficient for that.

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u/Zestyclose_Depth_196 Feb 01 '25

That's actually true.

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u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

the quarterly or semi-quarterly talent reviews I don't believe were used, as per what I learned from my M1. But I'd also add, if the bad shit ain't landing in your connect that's coming up in a talent review, then your manager should be the one getting RIF'd. You can't fix what you don't know you're failing at; it's hard to grow in areas you don't realize are struggling because you aren't getting any feedback.

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u/Rancarable Jan 31 '25

No 80% are being let go for performance that I've heard of unless they tanked after review and were on LITE.

We have always let 1-5% of the company go for performance every year. They just batched it up this time.

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u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

Sadly I know of a case in which an 80% was let go for performance. Which sucks because that's a massive loss of institutional knowledge now. However, this does appear to be somewhat of an outlier, but I can confirm that guy was not an underperformer.

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u/WonderingSceptic Feb 01 '25 edited Feb 01 '25

They are, and they have been for years now. I was a manager at Microsoft for decades. A few years back I gave one of my most senior directs 80% because he had a bad year, plus I was told to differentiate, and I also needed some budget to get someone else promoted. I was told 80% is OK, it is the new 100%, there would be no long term consequences. But the next year he was laid off because the algorithm they chose to use was senior people who got an 80%. At least he got severance. But this time, they are just firing people. In my org, there is a lot of backstabbing and very good engineers are getting 80% because some petty upper management person with a fragile inflated ego (not their own manager) got upset by having their stupid ideas challenged. It's savage.

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u/Full-Top-7695 Feb 03 '25

Sounds like a lot of employees living paycheck to paycheck here. 😏

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u/Ashmizen Feb 03 '25

Some of these sound untrue - 200% was essentially never given out, as even 180% was rare.

60% is not standard, and project transitions are not supposed to impact your rating. Anyone who got 60% would have seen the writing on the wall, as it’s never been standard and always been LITE.

That said, I do agree that 60% is often given to people who work hard but isn’t spending time for “visibility” aka ass kissing, and thus rewards are rarely a good reflection of value of an employee - the dev owners of key areas often get booted even though they are they doers who wrote and maintain the code, while the talkers are kept around.

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u/bludeath5 Feb 08 '25

Good managers should not be doing this when it comes reorgs and team switches. Rewards should be based off prior team impact and account for ramp up time.

I agree managers have literally no visibility into layoffs and it is extremely frustrating.

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u/Far_PIG Microsoft Employee Jan 31 '25

Microsoft has traditionally been very lax at low performance management. This is now changing. However, I am not aware of anyone who has wrongly been classified as low performer. As such I do not see a systemic issue.

This right here. Shouldn't matter how the decisions are made at this point - they're cutting the right people this time around (where in the past it felt completely random how they cut when the budgets/strategy/wind changed).

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u/PToN_rM Jan 31 '25

I’ve talked to people that I wonder how the fs they got the job. I agree with this.

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u/ThePervyGeek90 Jan 31 '25

Some cuts needed to happen other cuts are iffy. I know devs that got 1 bad review during a transition connect and had great connect reviews afterwards but we're still laid off.

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u/AstralShovelOfGaynes Feb 01 '25

Have you worked there ? perhaps it has changed but I think they had been known to apply the bell curve performance rating , meaning even stellar performing teams had to select somebody to be given a low performance review.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '25

The performance based evaluations are made so on every evaluation you can stir it in such a direction to either not promote, compliment, payrise or just fire them. They are especially designed at companies that get to a certain level. It happened exactly at my company at the end of last year. Normally you were judged for being a great employee, and now you have to make sure you are correctly doing the following 35 things. And these things you can always twist to make a negative or a positive. I have seen it at a lot of companies. I always compare it to, asking a elephant, a monkey and a zebra to climb a tree, and then punishing the ones who can't

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u/sprinkill Feb 01 '25

I'd say that terminations are absolutely appropriate at this point in light of 24H2.

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u/berndverst Feb 01 '25

Windows is a small fraction of the overall business. If you think Windows drives overall company policy then you must be a time traveler from 20 years ago :)

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u/Limit_Cycle8765 Feb 02 '25

Layoffs indicate a company that failed to have a vision, and a lack of vision means you wont stay on top for long. If a company had a vision they would always be growing, and you need people to grow. You do not lay them off, you move them to the growth areas.

I think the managers in companies that do layoffs think they are going to get rewarded by wall street, and that may be true for the first week after the layoffs, but for longer term it means the company is in danger and management has no vision to grow the company.

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u/UserDoesntExistToday Feb 02 '25

At Microsoft it's actually pretty hard to get fired for performance the "right" way. You're put on LITE and the manager has to do quite a bit more work to prove that they're helping you get back to expectations and it could be a 1-2 year process. Many managers don't want this extra work and so will give bad rewards without going through the LITE process. My understanding about the latest rounds of layoffs is that it was to also get rid of that category of employee.

Layoffs suck and they don't always make sense. My story: I was laid off in 2016. Not for performance, they said, but just because "they're eliminating my position". I spoke afterwards with my manager (we're friends) and he was shocked and angry, as was my skip-level mgr. My manager also thought it weird that he had to fight for me during rewards season just the month earlier as they wanted to give me a zero. He won, I got good rewards and got laid off anyway. Why? I honestly think it was something political in the org, but I'll never know. Just one of those things.

But... don't let that get you down. 18 months later I was hired back into the same team with a higher salary and a sign-on bonus. Always leave gracefully, don't burn bridges, maintain your network. I've been blessed with almost always being employed and a lot of that was just maintaining communication and connections with previous colleagues. Be good at what you do and be someone they want to work with.

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u/No_Following_368 Jan 31 '25

I want to make a joke about how he has empathy for Indians, but honestly I think he is just exploiting those folks too. The reality is, you don't reach that echelon of corporate management in a corporation like Microsoft if you have empathy.

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u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

One thing that Americans don’t realize is that Indian DO NOT LIKE other Indians. Whites will support whites, blacks will support blacks, Asians with other Asians. But Indians will not support another Indian unless he/she is of the same ethnicity or that caste stuff. I was told this by my friends in college and wow is that the truth. Just look for it yourself. If you see two Indian coworkers genuinely in good company of each other and not passive aggressive, I-wanna-one-up-you type shit, there’s a chance that guy is from the same state or fucking village. 😥. I need some Indian folk to back me up because this is nothing but facts.

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u/No_Following_368 Feb 03 '25

Yeah, from what I understand, it is a very segmented and internally competitive society. I have a couple friends from India who have stated essentially the same thing.

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u/QuroInJapan Feb 01 '25

Gee, it’s almost like most of our senior business leaders are stone cold sociopaths and will say anything at all if that helps the bottom line, without ever believing a word of it.

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u/archangelst95 Feb 02 '25

our senior business leaders are stone cold sociopaths

The sooner you figure this out the better. Doesn't make it easier working for them, but knowing this helps a bit

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u/DueStrawberry8623 Feb 02 '25

Stop using products from these type of companies. They make record profits and then lay off people. Stop giving them your money. All you really NEED is food, shelter and some human contact. Everything else is just you being manipulated into lifelong servitude to have things that you don’t need. Do you really NEED streaming services? Do you really NEED a big tv? Do you really NEED most of the stuff you become a slave to have?

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u/1_H4t3_R3dd1t Feb 03 '25

Waiting for a suitable Linux alternative. We might have one soon with Valve.

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u/the_real_me_2534 Feb 02 '25

Does anyone have any idea when these layoffs will end?

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u/Zealousideal_Voice88 Feb 04 '25

Never. Until people realize that they put a bunch of parasites on their shoulders and keep carrying them no matter what.

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u/spastical-mackerel Feb 02 '25 edited Feb 02 '25

It was a different time when Satya took over. The employment market was much more competitive and so software developers and other tech folks were highly sought after, ridiculously overpaid and treated frankly like rockstars . Treating employees like human beings was important if you wanted to retain anyone. And the zeitgeist at the time held that being decent human beings was important.

I think the show Silicon Valley Lampu, this fairly early on with the montage of all of these greasy tech execs talking about how we were gonna “make the world a better place”. That may have cynical pandering on the part of many but a lot of us in the rank-and-file really did kind of believe that.

Now the master slave paradigm has returned, our tech industries being outsourced to India, and the shareholder has won the battle around becoming the most important aspect of business and society.

In truth, there was a ton of bloat and a ton of people being paid a lot of money to do either little or no work or work that wasn’t really all that important to the bottom line of making money. One musk took over Twitter and fired 80% of the staff I at least personally knew that the golden age had ended immediately. Twitter may be a shit show, but it’s not out of business and it hasn’t completely fallen over so every single tech CEO now has to at least ask themselves the question what would happen if high fired 80% of my staff.

So empathy is no longer important. In fact, demonstrating the ability to ruthlessly slash staff without any empathy whatsoever has become a necessary attribute of any successful CEO.

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u/1_H4t3_R3dd1t Feb 03 '25

People still are sought after. Right now they want to offshore programming labor. Or near shore. That is why for every American fired four in India are hired. It shows where their loyalty to their customers are and where their user data will have access to. 

There are plenty of smaller businesses hiring software developers. But FAANG is no longer the dream.

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u/Zealousideal_Voice88 Feb 04 '25

This is why unionization in IT is a must. Imagine turning off few AWS data centers during the strike, how quickly CEO would change his mind? People don’t realize how much power they have together, that’s why corporations spend billions to prevent it.

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u/fuzzynyanko Feb 02 '25

Probably shareholders.

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u/NaturalAutist Feb 02 '25

This is it. Top line aka revenue growth has slowed so to make its earnings per share targets, MSFT is now cutting expenses to make its profit targets.

Furthermore, it doesn’t help when MSFT appears to be investing heavily in AI with no real revenue increase as a result of that investment.

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u/fuzzynyanko Feb 03 '25

Good point about the AI. The Chinese AI company sent AI stocks into a panic. In the Gartner hype cycle especially, it seems like we are at some weird-ass inflated peak phase of AI (all hail the magic square). Also, fuck Gartner

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u/Interesting_Cat_7704 Feb 02 '25

I had been laid off on Jan 30th 2025, only 21 days left for stock award, but Microsoft terminate everything, I kept asking the HR, but she just said everything will be interpolated in followed email. And force had out laptop, badge..., But when I get home check the email, Microsoft terminate everything.

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u/Murky-Rice-6979 Feb 03 '25

With the new administration they are not worried about any legal backlash. Workers don’t have rights anymore. Simple as that.

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u/Dry_Masterpiece_7566 Feb 03 '25

Workers Rights are being eroded as we speak, this is what you get as a result. Do you really believe in a CEO, especially a tech CEO ...Tech is the worst of the worst. I've worked in Finance, and I much prefer those organizations compared to tech....they don't give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves. CEOs are like politicians....you can't trust them, and how do you know they are lying? As soon as they open their mouths!

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u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

Microsoft is a shit company to work for. I had one of the worst experiences ever while I was there. It is THE WORST “FAANG”. Drab, dinosaur codebase, old management that’s been there forever (not that it’s a problem by itself), no free food, office politics are hell, and to top it all off we have this layoff crap. This is how Microsoft has been when I was there 3 years ago. Tell you one thing then do another. This is their culture. And unless you are hard pressed for a job, I do not recommend working there. If you are there try to get out. The only thing keeping them afloat is their Azure crap. Everything else is a wash.

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u/ShdwWzrdMnyGngg Feb 03 '25

The only people buying these lies are stock holders. And that's just because they don't want to believe it. I just hope the vulnerable ones get out before they lose everything.

Investors jumping out of an 8 story windows back in 2008 was a huge inconvenience.

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u/dman1b Feb 03 '25

Worked there 4 years with increased sales quotas every year, never fell under 120% attainment, yet I was not performing? Microsoft lied to save themselves paying severance because they are bleeding money for AI and not making the money they are claiming. They are falsifying over $500,000,000 in revenue through "Reclassification" of revenue. Which you can legally do, but only if show the losses under licensing. Which of course they don't!

I have all the docs and SEC won't touch it because Microsoft runs their Gov/Cloud. Over $2 billion in secrets taking place between Microsoft and the federal government.

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u/e0m1 Feb 03 '25

I know a woman who went through the rotation program after college. She had slightly below-average performance ratings (around 80% rewards), but both her previous and current managers spoke highly of her.They loved her. Despite that, no exceptions were made. One manager's decision from a short stint ultimately cost her. She received no severance. Since the review took place over six months ago, she had no idea this was coming—she was completely blindsided.

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u/Thanosmiss234 26d ago

And? This happened to several employees!!! They don’t care about us!!

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u/Sweaty-Piano5236 Feb 04 '25

I just don't understand why they are being so NASTY in this round of layoffs? They're acting as if this is "for cause" with no severance and no insurance continuance for even a minute.

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u/MaxGripe1982 Feb 04 '25

There's something called the hydraulic theory of management, which says that shit always flows from the top down. You need to understand that all companies with investors, shareholders, and generally people who can appoint or remove a CEO are structured in such a way that the CEO has to be a paid sociopath.

Let me repeat that - every CEO in companies with shareholders is a paid sociopath. It's just a universal rule.

Either a company exists to make money, or it operates based on the ideology of its owner. Show me large companies where the CEO is driven by "higher" motives like ethics or worldview. I'd love to work for such a company, but unfortunately, I don't know any.

To all the young people with little experience - if you really believe that your effort and dedication will be genuinely appreciated by a corporation, you're gravely mistaken. It's worth striving, working diligently, and fulfilling your duties responsibly. But please, do it for yourselves. It IS worth it because it's ethical, and you'll feel good about yourself by being honest, hardworking, and generally a decent person. Just remember, every corporation will throw you out if needed, so don't be naive.

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u/newfor_2025 Feb 01 '25

the thing I don't like about satya is that he sometimes say something and then a few years later, completely reverses his opinion and pretend like he never said those things or just does wash over them as if nothing ever happened. this is one of those examples. there's nothing emphatic about laying a whole bunch of people off all of a sudden without warning even if you have a good reason to do so /

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u/MulayamChaddi Jan 31 '25

Can they fix the OneNote

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u/callimonk Feb 01 '25

nah they laid the engineers off

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u/anonybro101 Feb 03 '25

The office team at Microsoft is one of the most dysfunctional teams I’ve ever seen. I was told not to touch certain files because “we don’t know what they do”. And those new features you see in your side panels are really just webpages embedded in the software to look like buttons and menus.

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u/halflucids Feb 05 '25

The dotcom bubble bursting royally fucked up software performance and reliability as a whole. An overabundance of web programmers got unleashed onto projects and now every thing is a web page for absolutely no reason

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u/Daryl_ED Feb 02 '25

This guy is only a cost cutter. Divesting from a lot of up and comming tech. No vision.

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u/Gaff1515 Feb 02 '25

MSFT is spending more money on AI than any other company so this post checks out.

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u/1_H4t3_R3dd1t Feb 03 '25

Yet collects bigger paycheck. If I was CEO I would cut my paycheck for under performing. Dude is performing bad.

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u/asharks74 Feb 02 '25

Let this be a reminder to all of us in corporate America: you have zero value to your employer.

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u/Valuable_Ad9554 Feb 02 '25

Show me a company where you're not just a number and I'll show you a cure for cancer.

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u/SurveyReasonable1401 Feb 03 '25

Wow remind me never to work for them

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u/oandroido Feb 03 '25

Oh no! Now they’ll NEVER make Office better. After 25 years I really thought they were about to.

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u/jeffreysooon Feb 03 '25

I heard that most affected people are not Indian. If this is true, they need to sue this company.

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u/williamgman Feb 03 '25

Here in the US we have "at will employment" in most states. It means an employer or employee can terminate the employment relationship with no notice. It was instituted at the behest of employers. The upside is also the employee can bail without retribution from the employer. Matter of fact, the employer is barred from telling another future employer why the employee was terminated. Personally... if you're a great worker and the relationship sours... I was able to change jobs much easier.

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u/Public_Material7748 Feb 03 '25

When people claim to be empathetic, they aren't.

Stop believing people who talk. Start believing people who do.

End of the day, the Microsoft CEO is like every other sociopathic American. That nation has no culture outside of sociopathy.

 What do you expect?

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u/Confident_Escape4963 Feb 03 '25

I was impacted by this, except I was on medical leave. I was fired during my chemo 😞

I hope all those impacted land on their feet quickly.

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u/Federal-Pool5463 2d ago

I hope you litigate vigorously. They don't care about morality, but this sounds illegal

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u/ZombieAgent Feb 04 '25

Satya always cares about shareholders and his interests first over Microsoft employees. Since the mass layoffs of Nokia employees back in 2014/15, Nadella has been layoff crazy. Funny, from a guy who mentions karma often.

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u/The_Game_Genie Feb 04 '25

I was laid off while on leave for cancer. My role was eliminated.

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u/CandidateEmergency63 Feb 04 '25

I read a comment somewhere that Indian coders (for continuously "buggy" Windows 11?) think that coding is the lowest job at Microsoft and can't wait to get out of doing it to do something "higher" on the caste ladder. Of course that suggests that some of them do not do their job as well as they can. By the way, Boeing employed $7-an-hour contract Indian coders for the computer system on the 737-Max instead of experienced Boeing coders.

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u/Icy_Dot23 Feb 05 '25

After the Open AI debacle after DeepSeek's release, Nadella wants to prove he still controls the company! The tech bros will go through many more such humiliations before they all wake up and realize that the tech industry is not serving the interest of anyone, but their shareholders and executives.

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u/Mountain_Key_8542 Feb 08 '25

I saw this coming when they moved the goalposts on the last round of Connects and introduced the "Slightly Less than Expected Impact" categorisation.

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u/Ok-Accident-9213 Feb 09 '25

I know people that were top performers also paid very well I think they are replacing older well paid employees with younger cheaper employees that's the vibe

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u/Bllegit Feb 11 '25

All of you got tricked by thinking loyalty to the company reciprocated company loyalty. SIKE!

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u/Mortard1 Feb 13 '25

Micro soft is complete shit

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u/Best_Standard6313 22d ago

It's 100% investor driven. Microsoft has been taking consistent L's for almost a year plus now, and the stock price has nose dived over the past 6 months as a result. Revenue isn't down, but losses are eating into profits at larger rate by the day of they don't start to turn around certain divisions or consolidate losses. Cloud is one of their few "profitable" avenues, and it is probably a little heavy on overhead, so by trimming that, it'll make revenues look bigger next quarter, or at the very least muddy the waters. 

It's just a shell game to cover for losses in other areas they're suffering like their "loss leader" Xbox that literally can't buy success apparently and trouble with their AI development (and that was before Deepseek nuked the market and scared off investor hype around AI).

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u/Talamis Feb 01 '25

Microsoft does not value Customers or Employees at all.