Microsoft salaries on display

>would you be ready to change your mind and stay?

No, but then if I decide to leave a company I’m probably not gonna stick around no matter what happens. Quitting is the end of a process, not a beginning.

And, Steve Ballmer has said over and over he didn’t throw a chair. But, who’s gonna believe him, right?

OH YES. I agree. As a matter of fact, I am looking for a new job as we speak. And you are correct, there is no better way for a Network Security Analyst to get back at the man, then to leave and go to work for that mans competition.

P.S. you’re hiring like crazy? I need to check out your HR page

“Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay”

These are quotes from Mark Lukovsky in a deposition. So if it was the end of a process, why would he bother to ask him to stay?

Of course you are going to try to change the person’s mind if they are trying to leave to work at a rival company. Yahoo’s email guy got courted by MySpace, but they got him to stay at Yahoo.

I was making the point that your aren’t going to be able to bully people into staying by getting violent with them. Dr. Lee also mentioned a type of intimidation at the end of his employment at MS as well.

While your joe average employee will never get that type of personal attention, it sends a message to even them in my opinion.

What you just described is called Capitalism.

And yes, you have the right to join a union if you so desire, with full knowledge that you will actively be “encouraged” to not work too hard or be too good at your job.

The only thing that’s wrong with unions is the government telling businesses that they have to negotiate with a union and that employees must join a union at a business if it exists (Canada does this, I don’t know if the US does) And that unions get away with breaking the law while they’re on strike and never get fined for it.

Balance the scales and Unions do minimal harm…

But in the tech industry, the great thing about it is that socialism has not had any effect on it because it moves too fast for the government or socialists to respond and adapt.

Oh and the people in the industry generally are individuals that don’t want to be defined by the group. Hence the term “geek”.

Here’s to the Rush loving, freedom loving, individual geeks that make technology so damned interesting and so much better than almost every other field in the world.

offtrack:

Scoble, you’ll like this http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/08/switched-on-the-contractor-and-the-architect/

>Yahoo’s email guy got courted by MySpace, but they got him to stay at Yahoo

So? Yahoo’s search guy got courted by Microsoft and they didn’t get him to stay.

In business you win some and you lose some. That doesn’t mean you don’t stop trying.

In Sweden I had lunch with a stock trader who told me about the day his firm lost about $1 billion in value before lunch. That just motivated him and his team to work smarter and harder. He said they made most of it back before trading ended.

He told me “if you’re in a car wreck, always keep working the problem. One little decision you make, even when it looks pretty dire, might save your life.”

Dude, how long have you had your job? My typical gig lasts 18 months or so. That’s how long the VC money (or contract programming project) lasts before the idiot board members your VC saddled you with burn the company into the ground.

One thing we tech workers are most definitely is the new migrant labor force and I’m pretty damn tired of moving every year. Its hard on the furniture, hard on the wife, hardest on the kids.

“That’s how long the VC money (or contract programming project) lasts before the idiot board members your VC saddled you with burn the company into the ground.”

Several people including Paul told me that accepting VC money is no longer a good thing to do(esp if they insist on controlling the board). I’m taking our business plan to the bank. If the corp defaults, it’s on the corp as an entity. Companies may start doing that. 18 month stints doing any type of job can’t be good. Not like the IBM days where people would work there for 50 years at a time. Those were better times for IT than now.

“That’s how long the VC money (or contract programming project) lasts before the idiot board members your VC saddled you with burn the company into the ground.”

Several people including Paul told me that accepting VC money is no longer a good thing to do(esp if they insist on controlling the board). I’m taking our business plan to the bank. If the corp defaults, it’s on the corp as an entity. Companies may start doing that. 18 month stints doing any type of job can’t be good. Not like the IBM days where people would work there for 50 years at a time. Those were better times for IT than now.

Scoble: “And, Steve Ballmer has said over and over he didn’t throw a chair. But, who’s gonna believe him, right?”

Steve Ballmer wasn’t under oath either. The guy telling the other side of the story was.

More to your post, I completely agree with you. I’ve seen people that just say “it’s your job, just do it” and suck it up. I believe that if you’re not enjoying your work then look for something else, and when you do find something you like, leave!

You spend so much time at work during a lifetime, why would you want to stick around a place where you feel deflated from the time you get up in the morning because you’re not looking forward to going to work? I’d rather be enthused about work and look forward to going in every day.

Any jobs out there for a good developer?

Diego: yeah, I know a few teams hiring. Wanna send me your resume?

Robert, I’m not a programmer. I’m a sysadmin with tons of heterogenous experience and better leadership skills than most of the people called “manager”. However, in spite of two decades of experience, the fact that I never got around to finishing my bachelor’s degree means that unless I know someone, my resume gets halted at HR.

And considering how much your company is advocating bringing over programmers from overseas to work for peanuts, I’m glad I just never liked programming. I find Bill’s arguement that there aren’t enough smart people in the US despicable and dishonest. He doesn’t want smart people with experience. he wants kids who are too stupid to realize that working 80 – 100 hour weeks isn’t dedication, it’s getting taken advantage of.

Finally, considering that MS senior executives have been busted either lying (Gates and Allchin) or acting like they’re utter morons (Gates) while under oath, pardon me if Ballmer’s word is worth less than the spittle that flies from his mouth when he’s yelling.

>he wants kids who are too stupid to realize that working 80 – 100 hour weeks isn’t dedication, it’s getting taken advantage of.

Weird. I walk around here and seeing kids in their 20s is getting to be a strange sight. I know I play up Sanaz a lot, but she’s the exception rather than the rule.

There are about 5000+ jobs MS may or maynot be hiring for. The silliest thing companies do is have an HR person sift through IT resumes. They never know who/what they are looking for or they take too long. So the real fact is that you have to know someone at the Company and then you have to interview well.

Here Scoble sign me up for this one: http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=87B0F974-C6CB-4CDB-ADD5-ED6804C24E8D&AllCl=Y&start=1&interval=1289&SortCol=DEF&SortOrder=DEF

As for Unions, they are very similar to relgions. A place to organize and control a group of people from doing there own thing. We all have great ideas of how the world should work. The really hard part is finding the balance between what we want and need. In the case of Unions you tend to trade one set of managers for another.

Oh well, I’ll join the crowd. I believe the subject is unionizing technical staff at Microsoft. Due to the diminishing and limited blue collar workforce, unions are driven to recruit white collar and clerical workers. This is not appreciated by management of large corporations for obvious reasons. The previous commenters have pointed out a number of reasons that technical white collar people don’t appreciate unions, either. So I don’t think Robert has anything to worry about besides the speculative reporter’s wild theories.

I experienced work as an engineering union member for over eight years (the Wichita Engineering Association, or WEA). It was basically the only way to find out where you stood in a union shop, since the salary statistics were available to union members, plus some other information. I call it a union shop because everyone was subject to the union contract even though membership was voluntary. Membership also gave a heads up on strike actions and entry to some company/union strategic projects (some interesting stuff). WEA eventually joined the Machinists, and now the Boeing plant has been sold to a Canadian outsourcing firm.

I imagine any white collar union situation will be different from another. My experience was that Boeing was able to apply a lot more downward pressure on salaries when they could negotiate three year contracts and hold the line, typically with a bit of cash on the front end without much money for raises later. But they have also experienced regular engineer strikes.

Considering today’s job mobility and the unionization requirements, it doesn’t seem that many large technical staffs are likely to turn union. On the other hand, entrenched tech unions such as Boeing’s SPEAA haven’t gone away, either.

” Cause there’s no better way to mess with “the man” than to walk off the job and work for the competition.”

Absolutely. I continue to work for Da Man (while perhaps biting his hand, too) because I Believe. Though I have issues. And nothing is better than to shed light on the issues.

My biggest hope is that Microsofties who disagree or are disgruntled or are dis-somethin’-else put some quality time into crafting their updated resume and discover for themselves: is there something better out there?

Maybe they’ll do their own comparison shopping and find out that their current job is pretty sweet. Maybe they’ll find opportunities elsewhere. Hopefully, for me and my little agenda, lots of them find lots of opportunities elsewhere.

Microsoft will get by. And I can’t imagine unionizing. I can only see that if truly we come into maintenance mode only for our two cash cows and all the poor people fixing heaps of Prefast and FxCop bugs decide they need a little bit of justice to go with the mononity.

Cheers,
Mini.

Maybe I’m still spooked from relatives that work for Caterpillar and go on strike every few years.

Actually it’s been a decade since the strike. But Thank God for that, was able to squeeze-in during the early 90s strike as a “scab” and made a good careerish run, well until the (future ill-fated) outsourcing clip was unloaded. Unions have their place tho, but have massive abuses too. Unions like WGA work, but unions like NEA and UAW strangle.

But Microsoft is just coddling in the same tech con games every other techy company does, free perks, good benefits, billionaire CEOs preaching wealth for all, but in reality just a choice few got in on that gravy train, but used as a MLMish come-on for the masses to work under market-level. Ponzi-scheme Microsoft style.

Robert, Microsoft has what, 60,000 employees? Pardon me if I don’t take the few you see as “not being in their 20s” as statistically significant for an industry I work in and you do not. As well, I’m so far unimpressed with your telepathy skills, so you telling me they don’t “look” in their 20s is meaningless as well.

I worked for Microsoft for 6 years and ended up not being happy with “the plan”. So I left and started the world’s first podcasting company (www.thepodcastnetwork.com). Life’s been a hoot ever since. Unions are for people who don’t feel like they have other options. Smart hard working people make SURE they ALWAYS have other options.

If microsoft falls to a union, so will the rest. I like being able to be a free lance programmer, or even an employeee, any time I want, anywhere I want, and to charge what I want when I switch jobs. Pay is a conversation between myself and my employer, I really don’t want a third party mucking around in there, do you? And I don’t want to be told I can’t work at company “X’ because I’m not in their union. Screw that.

The world would have been so different if matters were of just two categories/colors, the way you seem to think. “Just leave if you don’t like it” type of recipes appears to divide the world neatly in such binomial categories…

Real problem now will be with those (made by this disclosure) unhappy campers whom MSFT cannot afford to lose. In short term MSFT may have to take a (5 to 35 percent) cut in productivity due to employee chatter and annoyance over the pay-scale subject. Then, in medium term, management will have to restore face for all the stories employees had been told about promotions, pay scales, and bonuses, stories that are now being contradicted by this “leak.” Last but not least, maybe you have an equally simple recipe (hence, easy to follow) for the MSFT management as well, Mr. Scobleizer.

I’m one of the people who contributed towards a Mini-Microsoft by leaving. In principle, I agree with the notion that if the job sucks, leave. However, there are a few obstacles for a lot of people:

1. If you have been at Microsoft for a while, you have a life,wife,kids and other ties to the area. If you don’t want to relocate, your options are limited because Microsoft does pay better than most other companies here. You could take a gamble on a startup, but maybe you’re past that stage in your life. What’s wrong with wanting a job you like doing, but that’s not in crunch mode for 3-4 years at a stretch, with a good chance of no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ?

2. If you are waiting for you green card, you could be stuck for 7 years or more. The security that a green card affords most immigrant workers is immeasurable.

3. Related to point 1., there simply are not enough companies in the Seattle region to support a mass exodus from Microsoft. If this were the Bay Area, you would not need all these new buildings. Trust me, I research the job market here(northwest) for a while.

Of course, your answer to those points could be “We don’t need older, experienced people” and “We don’t need no damn H-1Bs”.Good luck with that.

Have you ever considered that maybe most of the people you are attracting to Microsoft today are the ones looking for a safe, secure job, not the ones looking to change the world ? Those other guys are going down to Silicon Valley, and not to the SVC either.

All that being said, I still believe if your job sucks so much that you are spending your day Ctrl-R-ing minimsft’s blog and bitching to anyone who will listen about how life is unfair, LEAVE.

Unions are not the answer. But don’t be too smug about Microsoft’s future either.

Of course, if you walk off your job to another one, you could risk getting sued by MS, depending on the circumstances.

I know I spend everything I make, so that makes it tough to walk off the job, but the truth of walking off the job is still…true. I’m trying to get to a point where I’m living on 70-80% of my current salary so I can walk away if my employer gets too demanding.

As for the talk about good tech workers, maybe you can be more specific. Are you talking about developers? Help-desk? Network Admins? Unix admins? Microsoft sys admins? I don’t see to many non-contract or non-developer jobs being advertised officially or through my network of colleagues. Is that just a problem in the midwest?

Oh yeah…thanks for mentioning that Garrett….so Robert, care to comment on how “great it is to be able to just quit if you don’t like” when you work for a company that likes to sue people to keep them from working anywhere else?

Hmm…how’s that word spelled again..h-y-p-o-c…