this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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This is so backwards. I had to read this a few times to try to make sense of the memo. Apparently, the reasoning is that instead of telling employees that they didn't get a raise because of company-wide cuts, try to convince them that they just did a bad job?
That's stupid. That would obviously have the opposite effect of softening the disappointment. Whoever wrote this memo is an idiot who has no idea what employees do or what they think.
It's only stupid if you think Microsoft wants to retain employees.
The tech industry is contracting after over expanding during the pandemic and, instead of layoffs, MS is hoping to get to their budget cuts by attrition.
Enjoy that Dead Sea Effect.
https://en.everybodywiki.com/Dead_Sea_Effect
Don't worry, if a competitor shows up (possibly started by an ex employee), they can just buy them. The lack of any kind of anti trust enforcement made the whole concept of innovation by competition irrelevant.
What I don't get about this is that presumably you'd lose more of the high performing employees that can find a better offer, and be left with people who can't afford to lose their job (no hate to them, these are human beings, but what I'm trying to point out is that the people who will quit will be the people with the most experience and other job prospects)
Seems counter-productive long term
Upper management would have to value employees for this to make sense.
Yes, this is a tactic used by lots of the large software companies when they want to raise the bottom lines, and phase out an aging workforce because saying the word "layoffs" affects share price. It also helps to reduce the salary demands of any incoming workers to replace the outgoing, because the baseline gets reset without having to justify why profits are high, but workers won't be getting any of that (previous position at 75% premium, but incoming at 25% less than scale).
An example with Google in 2021-2022: tell all your middle-managers they'll need to do something unreasonable like relocate to keep their job, wait for some to leave, then put the rest on PIPs and promise their underlings they can apply for the soon-to-be vacant role if they keep up the good work. Effectively, Google only had to publicly acknowledge firing 12,000 employees, when closer to 20,000 were displaced for various reasons. It's a shitty shell game to keep the share price high, and force people who stick around to do more work for less money.
I might get sick. This is so disgusting I can’t even. Thanks for pointing that out. As an entrepreneur, I always try to make it worth everyones time. Seeing stuff like this just makes me sad.
The "Win-Win" strategy is always the best strategy, long term.
Honestly, I agree that it’s the best strategy for all people involved but not one to retire with. I think our world is much too harsh to accept all people winning. So, while I‘m not willing to do the „fuck you I got mine“, I think that’s the way to make the home run.
I don't know, I retired with that. /shrug
It's only harsh because we don't help each other with the win-wins. Honestly, just think of a world where we all cooperating with each other 24/7, how that would look.
When everyone is fighting everyone then only a few benefit from that, usually the ones already at the top.
I appreciate your thoughts, I really do. But so far we have made different experiences and neither of us can prove that their theory is (the only) viable. I can tell you that I would have retired, had I not given back as much as I did, you‘re saying you actually did. Neither of us knows how much or little the other one actually did, how viable their strategy was to begin with and so on. I don’t see this going very far on that basis.
For what it's worth I'm not basing my opinions on your life experiences, but what I see everyone going through, and "The Human Condition", and how people are.
I believe you're being overly cynical, but I totally understand one's personal perspective can set that level of cynicism, as they go through life.
No companies will always frame any negative situation as the employees fault. It's gasslighting 101
I just want to add that my brother had this happen today. He's a contractor at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and he asked his direct report whether they'll be renewing his contract next month. They said that they didn't know, because a high level manager who has never met him or likely seen any piece of his work is still assessing my brother's performance.
I pointed out that based on what he knows of the project and his role, he's fully qualified to answer this question: is it at all possible that they're invested in the success of the project, but think that letting him go and then starting a totally new contract hire search is going to make the project any less expensive or faster?
The answer is obvious. They might let him go because they lose interest in this wildly neglected project, but his performance is objectively nowhere near a level where replacing him would save time or money, and if they were serious this decision would've been made weeks ago. They clearly have no idea what they're doing next month and negging him while they try to figure out what the hell their goals are.
I would find a new contract and bounce at the end without notice.
My company tanked last year and I ended up getting laid off, and as part of the process senior leadership owned the budget problems and in my layoff, I was given full pay for 16 weeks and uncontested unemployment (which I did not end up needing), as well as a job recommendation. Fortune 100 company.
Microsoft fucked up here and this manager memo is ridiculously stupid. This is how you hemorrhage the talent you're trying desperately to keep during budget shortfalls.
Companies aren't supervillains. They're just people, and people here fucked up.
Meanwhile the C-suite are getting record compensation and stock buybacks. There is no "budget shortfall", it's just typical greed at the top that's hoping the rank and file will swallow it.
My company didn't respond to COVID aggressively and lost market share to competitors, and our CEO stepped down because of it.
This is what you do if you want to encourage attrition.
They want to neg their employees, sounds like.