Microsoft Freezes Salaries for 2023

This kind of comment woups not have been here like 3 years ago.

It was an amazing journey to watch HN denisens adjust their opinions as they went from creme de la creme and 'anyone can create a unicorn tonorrow' to, you know, being basically like a plumber but for JSON.

The deflation has begun, if you look at M2 money supply. But food is not going to decrease in price, and housing will lag. So it'll still feel like inflation, but consumer goods are already going down.

From a purely financial and management perspective, this is an EXCELLENT decision. It really is a _lazy_ method to handle layoffs with excellent perception from stock holders' viewpoint. We all know how bad it looks when management executes on a situation similar to Gavin Belson firing the Nucleus team. Perception is all that most management and financiers care about anyways as long as the money keeps flowing. The people do not matter, only the money does. It is acceptable to sacrifice your people, as well as the welfare and good will of your employees, in favor of shareholder primacy anyways. So instead of doing layoffs, instead you can make business decisions that negatively impact employees to _make them want to quit on their own_. Hell... that saves a lot of money in the long run as well as a lot of time on management's end ( time = money ). Then when top or even mid talent is lost, it still doesn't matter because the "left overs" that remain still keep the business running at a "good enough" level.

And that, my friends, is the key phrase on what is prioritized in all business right now ... "good enough". All that matters nowadays is the answer to the question of "good enough". For example:

- Are the quality/quantity of FT employees we currently have on payroll good enough to keep the business running? - Does our invoicing/contracts/income look good enough? - Are we doing good enough to keep our competitors at bay? - Is there anything we can cut to stay good enough? - Are there good enough incentives for our employees to stay with us? - Are there good enough incentives for our CUSTOMERS to keep doing business with us?

It is my opinion that the days of "expecting excellence" or striving to "be the best" is totally over for the current generation. For the most part in the tech business environment, management and market forces are only interested in keeping money flowing at a "good enough" level. On top of that, western culture seems to have forgotten what "the best" even means right now. And without even having a definition of "the best", how is it possible to be "excellent"?

We are in the middle of an extremely boring time in our lives. There is a massive drop off of real talent and creativity. Top and mid talent are deciding to hold back because the incentives are few, if any exist at all. Honest improvements and true innovation will be stagnant for at least 5 more years. Boredom will be the norm for a while. Until something actually _exciting_ happens or something incredible is discovered (I have NO idea what that could be), this will be the norm for a long time.

My company did it in 2020 (and only in 2020).

You know, nearly anyone qualified to work at Microsoft (at least as an engineer) is qualified to work for some yuppie Wall Street job paying obscene salaries and bonuses; I think this is going to have the selection bias effect of the people remaining are people who cannot find work elsewhere.

If their goal is indirectly lay people off, I really think that they have not thought this through.