[pjc50]

unhealthy obsession with being promoted, being promoted quickly, being recognised as excellent, nothing less-than-excellent on his review

That is the mentality the Microsoft metrics-driven management is supposed to encourage. You have to get promoted to be recognised. You have to be seen as better than those around you to avoid being cut in the stack ranking.

[hamburglar]

Yes, absolutely. Once you stop getting promoted at Microsoft, management is conditioned to look at you as dead wood. I was there for nearly 10 years and had good coaching through 5 promotions. One of the things that was kind of nice about the system is that my managers were always really good at spelling out exactly what was going to be expected of me in order to reach the next level. Unfortunately, the requirements just keep ratcheting up, and I got to the point where what my manager laid out as the next set of requirements was simply never going to happen. I wasn't interested in putting in ever-increasing effort and taking on ever-increasing responsibilities. This is when he explained to me that if you just decide to be happy where you are, Microsoft basically starts to lose interest in you and you get the shaft in the stack-ranking. So I left.

[fsk]

"Up or out" makes sense for the military or a law firm or accounting firm. When a software company does it, then it's just needlessly churning employees.

Of course, Microsoft always has plenty of recent college graduates eagerly applying every year, so there always are replacements.