3 ms·
My thesis is that many of them, especially at places that grew a lot during covid like MS, were/are overpaid relative to their skill set / ability to add value.
by csa 3y ago
My thesis is that many of them, especially at places that grew a lot during covid like MS, were/are overpaid relative to their skill set / ability to add value.
Cutting positions was one way to correct this.
Freezing salaries is another.
If any devs hired during covid think that their salary was totally justified and shouldn’t be cut directly or indirectly, then they are more likely than not delusional. It was a frothy hiring market, and the upward pressure on salaries across the board was not healthy for the overall tech ecology, imho (the smaller companies couldn’t afford competent devs).
Note that I am actually an advocate of tech corps sharing more of the spoils with their employees, but not in the way that it happened during the pandemic. Reward competence selectively rather than randomly rewarding just being a warm butt in a seat during a hiring boom.
I have no doubt that during this “pay freeze” at MS, the star performers will still be rewarded somehow.
- fzeroracer 3y agoOkay, but there's a core flaw in your argument: Microsoft has already cut jobs, and now they're freezing salaries for everyone. You're effectively trying to say that everyone at Microsoft deserves a pay cut and that their salary is unjustified, which seems a fair bit more delusional. It seems to me you're working backwards from the position of 'Microsoft is justified in what they're doing' and then continuing to adjust your position in order to make that statement true. Given that Microsoft is still extremely valued according to their stock prices and that their earnings are higher than ever, citing market conditions as a reason to cut salaries when your market condition is positive reeks of bullshit.
- csa 3y ago> You're effectively trying to say that everyone at Microsoft deserves a pay cut and that their salary is unjustified Key employees and high performers will be rewarded at MS and elsewhere. It just won’t be announced in a press release. If you want to disagree with me or think that what I say is bullshit, that’s fine. The market will have the final say. I’m just a pundit on a message board. Imho, this move by MS, which will probably be followed by others, is just them exercising their options on their side of the labor market. If folks don’t like it, they can leave and/or change careers. There will almost certainly be a little bit of collateral damage, but I imagine that most of the high value-add people will be happy with their pay packages while keeping their mouths shut.
- Firmwarrior 3y agoI wish I could short MSFT, but it still seems like a bad move. The whole company is built around being just barely good enough and hard enough to remove that they stick around forever from inertia The products are all going to keep getting worse as they lose the talent to maintain or upgrade them meaningfully, but it'll take a long time for the company to fade away