Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
1.5 years ago: Leaked (Internal) Microsoft Poll: Most Microsoft Employees Want to Leave the Company If They Can Find a Job Elsewhere
This hours-old report says that people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label, which is a ruinous stereotype. It says "Amazon famously culls its workforce based on performance metrics, and Microsoft reportedly has plans to do the same."
Wrong, it is already doing that. It started a while ago.
The stigma of "low performer" can render one unemployable, so this new comment seems appropriate. Turner from Walmart turned Microsoft into Walmart.
This is what Turner did:
Kevin Turner entered the scene with his trade mark barber shop quartet choppers, and sold to Microsoft that MS should always manage out the lower 10% every year no matter how big or small the team maybe. It’d be a good thing as when they’d leave, they’d still use MS product anyway and thus more widely spread out the propagation of the tech and it assures MS has only the cream of the crop. This coming from a guy who I’m sure had to have a constant tutorial on how to use the later operating system. Much akin to a used car salesman, telling surgeons how they need to do what they do.At MS the difference between a low performer and non-low performer can be miniscule [sic].
Microsoft has a billion performance metric any of which they pick to be the determining indicator that they want. Things that I witnessed. Naturally I’ll not divulge names and will paraphrase.You, Bob, closed three less cases than the average for the year, this makes you the low performer.
You, Sue, took on average 42 min longer to accomplish “x” tasks than others.
A low performer at Microsoft is stellar compared to everyone outside of MS but the stigma of being let go with that label is impossible to overcome as Microsoft deemed you “not worthy” of working with their products. If Microsoft had any sense of class and style, the’d give you a choice.
“Bob, Sue, you have fallen into the category of low performer. Your choices are as such, voluntarily leave on your own or be managed out as a low performer for the reason of your dismissal.”
In another thread (full of Microsoft insiders) someone has just said:
Very concerned about the mediocrity I see at msft, esp across non product dev functions and roles. I see directors and higher that would not even make the senior prod mgr level anywhere else in the top tech world. And yes, I have seen low performers ready to be booted off msft somehow land jobs in other groups and rising to very senior levels, just because they fit a certain category of employees, and certainly not because of merit. I fear this type of stagnant and complacent culture will backfire spectacularly on msft in the AI era. Hope I'm wrong.
"It's OK. It's going to be OK," someone else joked. "The low performers from other companies will need a new place to land and a flailing and failing company is just the place for them. They can join the ongoing en5hittification race to the bottom."
This "race to the bottom" is one nobody covets. At Microsoft, however, just like at IBM, there is a race to the bottom. █