[sombremesa]

Microsoft employees are some of the most complacent I've ever seen. Some of my Microsoftie friends haven't had an interview (aside from maybe one or two recruiter calls) in over ten years, having been there since graduation. Needless to say, their comp is peanuts. Yet they frequently stay at work late and have to drop engagements as a result.

Microsoft has the magic formula for lifers who don't ask much and work just as hard as anyone else, if not harder (by big tech standards — startups folks work way harder for way less).

[gregd]

What you call complacency, I call contentment. Some of us don't like job hopping. Still others of us don't like startup or hustle culture. Some of us have families to support and are quite content to work hard for better than average salaries and benefits, live and work where we want to, engage with friends we've made at work (even across business teams), build retirement. Some of us have even spent many months out of each year, traveling the world with some of our coworkers.

[JohnFen]

Totally valid. But at least with the Microsoft engineers that I know well enough to have frank conversations with, half of them are the the opposite of content. They are unhappy, but feel trapped by their careers at Microsoft.

I get it, change is scary, but I do remind them that there is a larger world outside of Microsoft and there is very likely a better situation out there for them if they look for it.

[glimshe]

As an ex-Microsoftie who's now making more money for less work... Why commit to a company who isn't committed to you? Because I have no commitment to ANY company, I ended up having more savings for me and my family than if I had stayed, that's why I ask.

Oh, BTW: no company is committed to you, only you and your family/friends (if you're lucky) will ever be.

[sombremesa]

> What you call complacency, I call contentment.

Contentment and complacency are ostensibly the same thing, though the primary reason I tend towards the latter term is because I think we ought to aspire to growth (in whatever sense you determine for yourself). That's just my opinion though. It's also worth noting that I have no way of knowing what others are aspiring to, aside from what happens in their life over the years (which can be a poor proxy, given the role of luck).

[gregd]

There is a component in contentment that I think is lacking in complacency...that of general happiness. So to me, they are not the same.

As someone who has a growth mindset I can assure you that in corporations like Microsoft or Intel (I worked at the latter), one's own personal growth is not only fostered, but highly encouraged.

Corporate life ain't for everyone and I get that. As a 56 year-old being squeezed out of the marketplace due to ageism, some of us aren't just after the highest pay or the most prestige at our jobs.

[sombremesa]

> There is a component in contentment that I think is lacking in complacency...that of general happiness.

I don't see it that way, complacency can be just contentment from one's own perspective — it may take a third party to call it complacency (sometimes wrongly so, such as that parable[0]).

[0] https://thestorytellers.com/the-businessman-and-the-fisherma...

(Though that parable fails to account for unforeseen financial emergencies and such...)

[seattle_spring]

All of those things are possible at other companies, with much higher pay to boot.

[lnxg33k1]

Omg they hired the HR from the PRC, how much social credits you got from this post?

[noleetcode]

Not at Microsoft, but have been at a company for a very long time being underpaid. I haven't left simply due to one issue: I refuse to do leetcode interviews. I've dipped my toes into the waters every once in a while and even the companies that swear to me up and down before interviews that they don't do leetcode, well, guess what I discover during the interview loop...

[JohnFen]

> I haven't left simply due to one issue: I refuse to do leetcode interviews.

If it helps any to know this, I get compensated at least as well as Microsoft (or equivalent) companies provide and have never had to do a single leetcode interview. I've never even been asked.

As near as I can tell, leetcode is used by a certain subset of the industry. But the industry as a whole is much larger than those companies.

[_huayra_]

Is there a particular subset of the industry you specialize in? Curious where the leetcode-lite/free areas might be (unfortunately I'm not in one of them).

[rufus_foreman]

>> I refuse to do leetcode interviews

I don't know what the bounds of leetcode are but can you translate that into something that would make sense in other domains?

Like if you wanted to hire a musician, you might want to hear them play first. Is that completely unreasonable?

[dynisor]

Hmm. It’s more like you want to hear the musician play first, but you don’t ask him to play something he is comfortable with to learn how skilled he is, nor do you ask him to play a known challenging piece of work. Instead you just start pulling out short “gotcha” songs with obscure key shifts and speed changes to test them. Like, sure a great musician will be able to handle it if they are a great musician, but it’s just annoying for the musician and there should be better ways to determine if they meet your expectations.

[noleetcode]

The example I always give people is imagine that you're a civil engineer and you walk into the interview and they have a bunch of Popsicle sticks, sticky tack, and a bowling ball.

They inform you that your interview is to build a bridge with the sticks and tack that can support the bowling ball rolling across it.

(Yes, I know the age-old argument that 'real' Engineers are accredited and all that, but I still think the example shows how ridiculous it all is)

[TheCoelacanth]

"Sightreading", i.e. playing a piece you've never seen before on the spot, is something that musicians are commonly asked to do in auditions.

[dynisor]

Of course, but this is like if the whole interview were they have you sight read 10 bars of music, and then 8 bars of a different genre, then 18 bars of another harder one. Then they just spam those at you for the duration of the audition. That is the whole thing. Like, yes. It is “a” way to do it, but it is understandable that there would be musicians who aren’t fond of that interview style.

[flir]

On the other hand you don't judge a doctor on his ability to dissect a surprise frog.

(A plumber might be a closer comparison).

[JohnFen]

> Like if you wanted to hire a musician, you might want to hear them play first. Is that completely unreasonable?

That's absolutely reasonable. But Leetcode isn't at all equivalent to that. Looking at examples of your work is.

[stuaxo]

Yes, leetcode is nothing like what you do for a job as a coder.

[electroly]

I had always heard of Microsoft as a good "rest and vest" employer: lower pay than its competitors but also less work and less stress. Is the latter part not true? I've heard it compared to a place like Amazon that is high pay but high stress.

[filoleg]

> lower pay than its competitors but also less work and less stress. Is the latter part not true?

Unless you are in Azure org (and maybe some other small specialized teams i am not aware of), it is often true.

Source: worked outside of Azure myself, it was great. WLB by default was nice and chill, but there was always plenty of room to push for more, if you wanted promotions/rewards/high-impact projects under your belt. People were amazing too all around. Had plenty of friends who worked in different orgs too. A couple of them transferred to Azure, and they quit a year or two later. They said that it felt like working for AWS in terms of how brutal it was (with one of them actually having used to work for AWS prior), which was night and day compared to their previous teams at MSFT.

[demographicsmbe]

There are a lot of foreign born msofties. Their comparison model to what is acceptable is different than the rest of us. That is why they don't muddy the water. On top of that, there are a lot of converted and unconverted H1Bs. The difference in culture in the MS population explains a lot actually.

[remote_phone]

Msft stock is up 10X in 10 years. They are all multi millionaires. I would be complacent too and quibbling over 3% probably isn’t at the top of my list of priorities

[sombremesa]

> They are all multi millionaires.

Sure, but so am I — and I know for a fact they make very little, because of the way they talk about our mutual friends' job offers — I cannot even tell them my salary, to be honest. (Making less money is not a bad thing, but the pertinent point is that they work longer hours than I do, in the same industry!)

> Msft stock is up 10X in 10 years.

Here I'd like to correct you on one point — stock going up like this does not necessarily equate to outsized wealth. When you join as a new grad, you get very little stock, and as you get more grants, they are market-adjusted (not to mention vested over time). Plus the early stock inevitably gets sold to buy a home, etc.

Feel free to ignore me if you knew these things.

[ethanbond]

They’re complacent but work harder than you? I don’t get it.

[sombremesa]

I updated the wording to help you out.

[User23]

If you’re smart enough to pay the tax on your RSUs and hold them for a decade then yeah it’s a pretty straight shot to a few mil. Even Amazon with its notoriously back loaded grants minted a ton of level 5 multimillionaires.

[sombremesa]

You missed the "personal" part of "personal finance." If you live in Seattle and started working in, say 2012, that "smart" decision would be costing you a ton of money today (certainly more than a few mil all said and done) should you be in need of a home.

[User23]

Amazon was consistently averaging greater than 30% compounding annual returns from 2012 to 2021, which is far in excess of the Seattle housing market. This is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a chart. Sorry to say, but if that was you missing out on those amazing returns to fund a down payment then you’re just bad at personal finance. In a (near) ZIRP environment you obviously buy real estate by levering up not by selling equity.

[sombremesa]

I usually don't argue with people who are this out of touch, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Let's do some math. In both cases we're buying the same home for keeps, so we can ignore the value of the final asset (would be the same in, say, 2100 A.D. in both cases):

Amazon stock 13x'd from 2012 to 2023. Say you had $50k vested by year 1 (close to what you'd have in 2013 as new grad). That money would be $650k in 2023. If you invested that into a house just around then, say in a $300k home, your interest rate would be ~3.7%. That means you would be paying $415,040 over the next 30 years, including your down payment.

Now let's say you were...you...and decided to wait till today. That same home is now worth $1.3 million in 2023. Your mortgage rate is 6.5%. You have your $650k in stock, so you put 20% down ($260k). Your mortgage is $1.04M. Over the next 30 years, you will be paying...a whopping $2,341,800. But hey, congrats on your "extra" $390k in stocks. By the way, you paid (if we are VERY conservative) ~$250k in rent while living in an equivalent property in those ten years.

[solarkraft]

What a surprise - complacency with bad situations is exactly what I envision when using (most) Microsoft software.

[elkos]

You said that their compensation is peanuts, is there a source one can look up upon? Just for the curious people like me.

[sombremesa]

You can look on levels.fyi for current comp, but it's a bit harder to find what someone's comp is like if they started ten years ago. Perhaps you could look at H1B data and extrapolate at a 3-5% raise p.a. with larger bumps every now and then. Even at just today's numbers though, MSFT lags behind comparable employers.