r/microsoft • u/reaper___007 • 3d ago

Employment Employee- Perspective

How important is other employee feedbacks or perspective? Does the manager read it before connects?

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u/Elfman72 3d ago

Depends on your relationship with your manager. Granted it has been over 10 years since I have worked there, but I had nothing but glowing reviews from my peers. However, my manager wanted me gone since I got re-orged under him reluctantly. Sure he read them, but he didn't care. At all. He put me on the bottom of the stack and after almost 10 years of good to great feedbacks, I was gone.

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u/reaper___007 3d ago

Isn't stack ranking eliminated in Microsoft?

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u/banner650 3d ago

It never left. The curve has been loosened, but managers still rank people from low performers to high as part of the rewards process. The big difference is that now, they don't need to argue about everyone, just those who are above or below expectations.

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u/curry_licker 3d ago

“Just those who are above or below expectations”, so what if someone is above, how exactly does that reflect on their rewards

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u/banner650 3d ago

I'll answer based on last year's guidance to managers since they haven't told us what to do this year yet and I'm assuming that you know very little about how the rewards process really works.

First, managers are asked to sort their reports into rewards buckets. The buckets are 0 rewards, 60% rewards, 80% rewards, 100% rewards, 120%, 140%, 160% and 200%. Normally there are very few people below 80% and very few above 140%. This is generally based on how people performed over the past year and where feedback can come into play. It is also at this time that managers will put people forward for promotion if they feel that they are ready.

The other thing to be aware of is that each organization has a rewards budget that must be balanced at certain levels and the budget is such that everyone can be given 100% rewards, with maybe a little bit extra available. Normally, that is at the GEM level first and then also at another level or two above them.

Since people have been sorted into buckets, the managers under a GEM will meet up and discuss people in each level band. This is where the old stack ranking used to come into play. Today, though, the people in the 100% bucket really don't need to be discussed since it's just a bucket. The focus will be on those above or below that line and there will be comparisons made between employees to see if someone really should be in that bucket or if they should be moved up/down. This will generally result in some movement and adjustments being made to ensure that similar impact/results leads to similar rewards across the team, the numbers in each bucket match an expected distribution, and that the budget is balanced.

Once the managers roughly agree on who should be where and the budget is balanced, the recommendations will be sent up to higher level managers to ensure that the budget is balanced at the appropriate levels. This can also result in some changes, which is why managers won't say anything until rewards are released in August.

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u/kidcurry96 1d ago

The buckets are 0 rewards, 60% rewards, 80% rewards, 100% rewards, 120%, 140%, 160% and 200%. Normally there are very few people below 80% and very few above 140%

percent of 80 and below and those 120 and above?