Microsoft Labels Some Fired Staff as 'Good Attrition', Imposes Two-Year Rehiring Ban (businessinsider.com)
- Reference: 0177350925
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/143242/microsoft-labels-some-fired-staff-as-good-attrition-imposes-two-year-rehiring-ban
- Source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ousted-employees-block-list-good-attrition-2025-5
Microsoft recently terminated 2,000 underperforming employees without severance and implemented a new performance improvement plan (PIP). Employees facing performance issues now must choose between entering the PIP or accepting a "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" with 16 weeks of pay.
Further reading : [2]Microsoft Offers Underperformers Cash To Quit .
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ousted-employees-block-list-good-attrition-2025-5
[2] https://slashdot.org/story/25/04/24/1442222/microsoft-offers-underperformers-cash-to-quit
Re:Lies (Score:4, Interesting)
Far simpler than that. MS has for 2+ decades implemented a "Bell Plan" style strategy to prevent American employees from getting vested in retirement and other benefits. (They don't care about H1-Bs because H1-Bs are slave labor that can't qualify ever anyways.) [1]It's illegal as fuck, [umich.edu] but companies do it anyways and count the fines as just "the cost of doing business" if they get caught or sued.
[1] https://webuser.bus.umich.edu/dmuir/Articles/Chimera_1995.pdf
NADELLA MUST GO (Score:1)
Underperforming? 2000 people?
- how long were these underperformers on the payroll?
- Who is at the top of that chain and failed to handle any part of this?
- What has MS done to innovate anything in the last five years. Hint: forcing everyone to upgrade to W11, paid support, and Recall are the opposite of innovative.
- SATYA NADELLA MUST GO. But, the thing is, he's the CEO of Microscrot so he has no boss. He's not answerable to anyone. I know, people will say "he's answerable to the board of directors."
Re: (Score:2)
> Underperforming? 2000 people?
My educated guess is that, at some point, in order to get promoted further you had to take a manager position. This means you have people who might be a good engineer or support rep but not great managers filling those roles. You wind up with managers promoting other managers, not based on their skill in management, but on how well they cover for each other, and your company ends up looking more like feudal England than a team trying to make products.
Re: (Score:2)
In engineering there are salary bands for individual contributors that are at the same level as manager. I would guess the bulk of these 2000 people are in sales and consulting, where your underperformance can be way more objective. Like if you bill less hours or sign less deals or generate less repeat business. If they are laying off engineers, its because there are A TON of engineers in windows division, but windows, as a product, is not very impactful to the growth of the company anymore. Part of th
Re: (Score:2)
There was an article about the Stacked Ranking system that MS used for decades and how it led to attrition of good employees. The problem was that it was a rigid Bell curve. Every year the bottom percentage had to be let go. The main problem is that after a few years, it was not just bad employees that were rated as "bottom" but good ones. The other problem is that someone on a team had to be designated as bottom and top regardless of their actual performance. That meant good employees did not want to work
Re: (Score:2)
At the size of MS there is never really innovation because innovation costs money and often doesn't lead to a marketable product or is in competition with another product they either already own, or are partnered with.. Small companies innovate all the time because they NEED the "new" or "different" to distinguish themselves from the MS of the world.
Large sized companies CONSOLIDATE.. (which by extension means the control/elimination of the SMB competition)
Medium companies expand the market by merging prod
And? (Score:1)
This looks like something 2001 people care about, none of which are me, and probably not you.
Departures are definitely beneficial (Score:1)
Some employees provide negative value, even if they would have worked for free.
Rehire ban for 2yrs? (Score:3)
Who would return to a company that used "good attrition" to relieve them of their job?
Re: (Score:2)
People who need to pay rent or mortgage maybe.
Performance Plan (Score:2)
1) Get hired at Microsoft.
2) Under-perform.
3) Profit!
F--k your PIP (Score:2)
If manglement tried to put me or anyone on my team on a PIP, I would take the severance pay and find a new job. And probably give the idiots in charge the finger on the way out.
Re: (Score:2)
As somebody who had to put an angry employee on a PIP which turned out to be a 3 month saga, let me tell you that I would have greatly preferred that they opted out.
It was with good intent. I really didn't want to have to let them go. But they exploded upwards through four levels of leadership, dragged me through a respectful workplace investigation, and ultimately quit one day before the three month deadline was reached. With no package.
The PIP has a bad rep, but sometimes it really is what it says on the
Re: (Score:2)
Putting someone on a PIP with the purpose of improving someone's performance is misusing a PIP. The reasons PIPs were created in the first place was to document poor performance so the employer can protect themselves from claims when they fire someone. Any employee who hasn't been living under a rock understands this. Being put on a PIP is a firing with a defined lead time. So you shouldn't have been surprised when it blew up. Instigating an HR investigation was a way of fighting back and preserving potenti
If you fire quickly, fire twice. (Score:2)
Sounds like they're trying to combine the societal benefits of layoffs with the societal benefits of firings for cause. It is important that laid-off employees and society at large in no way allow them to have things both ways.
label links to paywalled content, please! (Score:2)
thank you
But they didn't get rid of the Edge Marketing team (Score:2)
They will stay on until Edge is number one again.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying they have basically been adopted by a corporation? Didn't even know that's possible.