Google, Go to company page Promotion budgets of 65 and above has been kept intact.Promotion and raise budgets are going to be quite tight everywhere, not just at MS. If it is, awesome -- go do it, drive it to completion. There is a comment about reporting to someone who is the same level as you are. One of my reports and I had that conversation not that long ago, and I explained to him that at 62, he can take on any task I'm asking him to do. Needless to say that not many will admit this fact. Then I would get emails rating my abilities in these areas that I had no input into it and any replies rebutting it would go unanswered. And the place where MS has the most non-contributing overheads is Redmond. Your level is essentially recognition of your circle of influence or radius of your contribution. What worked for me was to go to my manager and say: "I would like to stay here, at Microsoft, working for you. Lots of groundwork, considerable drama and leverage but eventually it got done. You have to enjoy it, or else it'll come across as insincere, and you'll do a half assed job. > What if you and your manager are at the same level L62. Weirder sh*t has happened before. Additionally, a Level 62 doesn't really have the tools to evaluate and sell a promotion to a 63. Less than a year is fast, but not unheard of. If you are not at the top of your stack rank for your level, you will not get the promo. Oldest and (still) best advice I've gotten is move around a lot; no two teams' cultures or needs are the same, so you have something to offer wherever you look. This past year I had what I thought was an outstanding year, was given a 20%, but not promoted to L63. I spend a lot of my time these days working with partner teams to help them solve their own problems or create wins for their teams even if it only peripherally touches my area. A mistake was a huge cost. You know you want to get to that other bar, but that chasm in between is fraught with risk. Of course I ensure my manager and skip-level are aware of my contribution as a mentor, but I figure that as long as I'm in front of the wave, the best way for me to advance is to move the wave forward. At L63 you should be directing v-teams, serving as a lead or possibly even having direct reports. Do a brownbag for your VP level group, record it and send out the link to everyone. Will they reach L63? did this post dieNo, the Mini-Electronic Brain did. "I'm in the 61 bucket and currently struggling with my team for many months. Typically if you can accomplish only 5 such improvements, it would be hard for your manager not to consider you for next step. Hi,Now that the Annual review is approaching, I wanted to seek tips on justification putforth to the manager to move from L60-L61. I dont know why this is the case. Perhaps someone can explain to me how you get successfully promoted without your boss's support. Most Directors are 63 and the occasional 64. Losing focus of your target next career level will leave you with nothing but regret and wasted time, sometimes years. How do you make sure you do a good job but not too good of a job.Also higher levels will tend to require you to do things you may not like. B.Sc in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, M.Sc in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Designing and implementing Software and Hardware Systems, Benchmarking and validating Software and Hardware Systems, Developing innovative solutions and publish papers and patents, Managing teams and keep track of progress, Predicting market trends, identifying market risks, Identifying future opportunities, preparing company roadmap. . Go for the team that offers the best package right during the transfer. L65 took four years. This 360 review is confidential and you dont have to share it with your mgr unless you chose to do so. If you want to advance and you are not a "favorite underling", your first and most important job is this: figure out how to become a "favorite underling". "I wonder whyMicrosoft: Citi Cuts Ests, Target On PC Slowdown. Getting constant feedback throughout is valuable as you can re-align and re-adjust in an agile way so that you are not shocked at review time that you have completely missed that promotion. Anyone know how to handle constant Re-orgs. Directors are usually senior principals (level 66, 67) or at Partner level. I'm interested in reading your perspective and what advice you'd give to someone new to the company looking at a career path similar to your own. Your commitments should already provide you with milestones to set as your goals. In my group that's the really tough one. Regarding the comment about the ability to own a room - This is a very good self-calibration technique. When it comes to where you actually rank and what you get paid that part is all that matters. 3. :)Then, over the next 2 years, I learned the magic of 65: it's not just about playing *well* with others, it's about making every team you work with great and helping them do their best work. Unless you're an asshat, in which case see mini's comment about slapping yourself around and listening to what other's think about you.And in those huge orgs with all the noise it is really easy for folks to rest and *ahem* vest, so you are overlooked by default.The key as mini and others have stated is finding the tech and team you love and everything flows from there (because you will be so excited you will go home and work another 4 hours every night examining customer feedback, competitive products, etc. Staff Software Engineer, Google Cloud Platforms, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure, Principal Engineer, Developer Platform Systems, Senior Software Engineer, Mobile (Android), AR. Barring extraordindary circumstances each year you will get the "welcome to our group" evaluation.Don't forget the aunts and uncles. Incompetent People Really Have No Clue: If youre one of the people complaing about how youre not getting promoted because your mgr is incompetent and youre just as good as all those others who got promoted you could be right. At Level 66, Microsoft employees reported that nearly 40% of compensation was in the form of cash and stock bonuses. Understand not just what needs to happen, but WHY. You go along with a good boss/employee relationship then all of a sudden, it's like you killed his first born. Will there be room on your team? Seniority level Director Employment type Full-time Job function Management and Manufacturing Industries IT Services and IT Consulting, Computer Hardware Manufacturing, and Software Development. After that I got 3 levels in 3 years and now at level 64. Experienced Operations & Project Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm 99.9% sure what needs to change is you. This will only lead us to a healthy and balanced distribution of levels across genders. I've been hearing some stealth layoffs around the SQL and BOSG groups, around 70+ people were given 6(?) Think about it. L6 =64-65. This will bump you off the fast-track 96% of the time.No matter how bad things are, always be positive, and provide a recommendation for how to address each problem. After that, I was given a team that was in trouble quality wise 6 months before shipping. That figures. I am a troll. The team that gave me the Dev Lead title made a bet on me, and they were not disappointed, since I worked hard to prove myself at that title (despite having to wait a little longer for a level promotion). Get FREE domain for 1st year and build your brand new site. Up to that point the "what" you accomplish can get you pretty far and you get some wiggly room on the how. Rather nice site you've got here. Help Your Manager (and your team) Be Successful: No one has more influence over whether you get promoted than your immediate mgr. In this testing times what will motivate the mgr to put you ahead of him/hers? Whether your manager is hardcore or touchy-feely, you need a bulldog to promote you or you ain't goin' nowhere. Should I trust my manager or is this just one more of his demonstrations of poor management skills? Risk and return are related. It's usually too late at that point. Being constantly re-orged is bad. So no time like the present to practice where you can. I came in at L61 2+ years ago. This is the first year I have spent more than 2 years at a level (L61) and still not gotten a promotion. Dont compete with them. Microsoft Corp. engages in the development and support of software, services, devices, and solutions. I also don't know if this is the first step towards a lay-off, but for now, it seems we'll have jobs for a few more months.Ugh, not good, not good at all. But power plays are at work and I get smacked when I try and take on extra work. There's a need to ooze authority in a way that is comforting to the person above you responsible for your career. Expertise in the following areas: Product Marketing Consistently created groundbreaking, customer-focused value . But in an organization this large, how do you avoid title inflation ? Thanx for it. I'm a level 62 dev trying to get to 63. Don't be the roadblock. Your manager has to know that either you get promoted sometime soon or you will go and get promoted somewhere else. The people around you can help with that. Obviously a key word in my advice was explicitly. Same applies if you started your career in Test. I think there's only one thing I would add, from the perspective of having been promoted from L59 to L64 in a 6-year period in one org (I left MS in 2006).Sometimes things within an org will turn to complete crap, and either there's not an option to leave or you may not want to. By contrast high performers have a fairly accurate self assessment, but are slightly self critical of themselves as well as others. "Next, I believe this post will most likely be useful for those who entered MS as intern/college hires. Learn How to State Your Case and Earn Your Raise, Climb the Ladder With These Proven Promotion Tips, A Guide to Negotiating the Salary You Deserve, How to Prepare for Your Interview and Land the Job. (Not). How long do people usually sit at L62 in MCS? Satya Nadella. You want to test more cases than he does, you want to build something that draws users to what you're doing more than to his.You're never competing with your manager. So I guess I know what it takes go get to level 63. I give you the example from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/awaits "A busy day awaits" as evidence.So one legitimate missing punctuation mark, one matter of verbal interpretation, one popular idiom, and one completely correct phrase. But the people in the team are below 65. No one is born an experienced mgr and even the most experienced mgrs are not perfect. The larger the team I work on the more I am bombarded with meetings and brown bags so someone can attempt to become the expert on design patterns, code coverage, or feature X. And in my experience they are *eager* to get your skills and your lower level payroll expense! Also, there's 2 ladder, management ladder and seniority ladder. You've told me you're not willing to have the hard career conversation with me and/or that you're not willing to do what I told you needed to be done when we had that conversation. How bad is this? I was always righteously indignant when I encountered asshats and incompetence and I would rail against the losers to anyone who would listen, and then I would do whatever it took to drive my agenda through to completion.I focused 100% on producing vast quantities of superior quality work -- which endeared me to my management chain and opened up a crap-ton of doors at those early levels. What are the levels for non eng roles? I'd like to see a transition plan from you in 2 days". I have only required two strategies. I asked them direct questions about what I needed to do to get the next promotion. Is there any way to get to 63 w/o leaving and coming back? Would they give you the level if you were not already a Microsoft employee? Yet, when you have 2 or 3 offers at the end of very hard interview loops, which one are you going to choose: the team that listens to HR or the team that listens to the market? Yes, "soft skills" count. That is a great post Mini. >Real HR managers from Microsoft would have just three [sic]s in a post of that length.I hope HR gets cut. Revise if needed. Some considerations, based on my own career:- The best way to get to level 63 is moving around, and getting promotions as you move. See next bullet. In MCS, soft skills are often more important than hard skills since you work with customers (often angry ones), sales (often under pressure and looking for someone to blame). Browse all Microsoft salaries . Of course not. It is true you can always do that, go to Google, go to ABC, or whatever. In the beginning, I volunteered for these tough areas that no one else wanted and over time, my brand became the fix it guy. If you are level 64 and above, your relationship with your GM or VP or above.2) Your visibility to the GM or VP. I thought changing groups would help me get promoted faster however all it did was make me resart from ground zero with each group. "The hardest point for me to bear is that I am young, capable of doing so much more, and absolutely dying to do more. My first year I thought for sure I would sit at L61 for another year, but to my surprise I was promoted to L62 without even a full FY under my belt. then the follow-up is: after what accomplishments and around when? Next, make sure your manager values your contributions and surpass their expectations, making yourself invaluable and not immediately replaceable. The news is in. As a member of the Microsoft UK Senior Leadership Team, Olaf leads Microsoft's retail and consumer goods . There may be multiple reasons for pay differences - one of which is a small number of salaries submitted per job. I haven't talked to anyone internally that has anything good to say about it. For technical and management track, the job level start from 57 and continues till 80. Microsoft Director level role - Level 66 - what should I expect from COMP sideYOE-15Current TC- 235k, Go to company page Tech corporation VPs are execs in the have-own-budget sense, and are usually the first position on the ladder that has this kind of control. Maybe everybody's aware of being "in lockdown" and keeping their heads down? If I ever do decide to come back to MSFT, I will do so as a level 68+ and nothing less. Real HR managers from Microsoft would have just three [sic]s in a post of that length. What I think may be worthwhile is understanding the circumstances of those anomalies and figuring out why they occur and how to "incent" management to ensure that they don't occur. You have to be extremely faithful to your management while at the same time carefuly growing your broad influence to your manager's piers. But power plays are at work and I get smacked when I try and take on extra work.So my question to the more experienced is this - how does one get the attention of management when they are focused on their own problems, their favorite underlings (of which I am not one), and when there is not enough work to go around? Normally this is acceptable but right now i smell lawsuit. I can vouch for the efficacy of this mantra.MS definitely does a good enough job on career progression and offering diverse options. If youre working individually there is an upper limit on how much you can accomplish since there are only 24 hours in a day some of which must be devoted to eating, sleeping, and other bodily functions. You're selling it in no less than eight different SKUs, (including the upgrades) and your marketing message is deliberately obfuscated to convince the customers to go for the most expensive one. The funding for our project stopped and our vendor team of 28 people have been asked to leave immediately. I work in MSN and we still have no way to know the levels of our peers. Title doesn't matter, that's a job description. But if you start when you think you are ready and work with your manager toward the goal, you'll get there. If you want to succeed at Microsoft (or anywhere else where you have a boss), the most important thing you can do is figure out exactly what your management wants from you and then make sure you deliver it in spades.Junior people often make the mistake of thinking this means "I will do my job to the best of my ability" and then they go off and work really REALLY hard at things their management doesn't find nearly as important as they do and so come review time these folks are *shocked* to hear that all of their blood, sweat and tears did not make the impression they'd hoped. Absolutely not Definitely yes 3 1 David Lean Worked at Microsoft (company) (1990-2009) Upvoted by Jack Schofield , Computer journalist who has covered Microsoft for 35 years. I'm hiring 6 good MSFT developer/consultants. Bottom line: Dont be shy of asking for promotions during internal transfers. By then I had already already set up several clients as in independent consultant, so I declined to stay. It's a knife fight to 63. He/she and you should know exactly what you need to do to get to the next level. Finally I got involved and had a one/one with the employee during which I asked him why do you continually insist on doing Y when your mgr asks you to do X? I nearly fell of my chair when he said because I want to get promoted and I know that to get promoted I need to do Y. Levels are different outside the US. The "how" now has broader impact. For some teams - especially those like Office with few departures release-to-release resulting in level compression - that's a rough bunch. According to Glassdoor, senior software engineers at Google can earn $172,818 as their average base pay, along with average cash bonuses of $30,921, stock bonuses of $104,769, and some other cash incentives for a total of $201,000. Judson Althoff. Email@ elliereinker@gmail.com | Call@ 330-554-0249. Pass me by and I will be leaving in the next few months). Our entire unit was let go but we were moved to different groups in the org. What are other groups doing? With this article at OpenGenus, you must have the complete idea of various job levels at Microsoft. This is hard for your manager -- he probably doesn't have a clear idea of what it will take to make the case. Help make it more accurate by, Get started with your Free Employer Profile, average salary for a Senior Director is $170,707 per year in United States, The Ultimate Job Interview Preparation Guide. You have the right stuff to succeed and Microsoft is very happy with you. Same here. What is the average promotion velocity for non-technical fields? Alternately, you can increase the scope of your own job and justify an increased level.So the only real question is, what do you need to do differently at the higher level? I have seen and known many of my own peers who don't get promoted because of potential but the number of people you know in the leadership team. From my perspective (L67) here's what you need to nail:1. Senior Director of Sales NEXT50 2022 - 6 Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates I am thrilled to announce that I started a new position as a Senior Director Of sales at Next50.. About Top-performing Senior Director in Digital Strategy & Commercial Development, with 25 years success in top-tier business across new Tech, data and digital in many sectors driving strategy,. Continuously revisit those and discuss with your manager. This makes it very easy to feel underleveled, because the 6 people that started 3 weeks before you might take up the 2 promotion spots available per year for 3 years (numbers all made up).You also, at least in my experience, aren't really given feedback on when you're performing at a level that *could* be promoted. But that will only be one more indicator that you are not ready to "face" your obstacles. Senior Account Executive | Director | Sales & Marketing. There is no better investment at Microsoft for tuning your career. You don't deliver products on your own -- you're usually building one system, one set of components that together make one successful (or unsuccessful) product.You can always, always find ways that make yourself, your manager, and your immediate team much more successful. ;) I have one thing to add that might help some. Tips for getting them on your side:1) Ask for Exceeded. This topic didn't elicit nearly as many comments as I would have expected. You might have the Microsoft Senior Career Stage Profile in front of you all marked up and broken into more sections in OneNote, but which ones matter most to your team? We all know how many architects there are but isn't Senior the same thing nowadays ? The Making of an Expert: in the great Harvard Biz Review article of this title the author debunks the myth that experts are born, rather than made. Get yourself a formal or informal mentor who is already doing what you want to be doing. Do a search for people in those groups in NYC area and check their status to see who is hiring. HC-freeze is already in motion, as is serioius savings in all FSC/COS - only thing still not explored is layoffs. Well, what about everyone else? Salesmanship is extremely important. Those teams I used to despise as a L60, and only tolerate as a 63? I've been 3.5 years at 62 and re-orged every year in mobile.Any ideas on how to carry greats results of one role into another through a re-org. Executing on what you have now at a high rate/quality level.2. Former is work of many years and long nights and proven track record while later is basically your ability to bullshit through 6 interviews. SQL is one of the groups that has consistently delivered quality and growth. Microsoft Compensation Software Engineer $ 80K $ 225K Average Compensation: $101,338 Senior Cloud Software Engineer $ 90K $ 175K Average Compensation: $128,000 Principal Software Engineer $ 90K. If I was 65/66 material, why did they wait until I gave notice to offer me the promotion? When I finally figured out how to play well with others and was able to show some major cross-group gains in addition to my own leet prod dev skills, that's when I became a 63.63 to 64 was a bit of a slog -- I'd say more like a full-frontal assault on lazy management, actually :). L8=Partner/GM. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did in some ways. Who da'Punk Think about why they're able to do that.These two lines really serve to summarize the incoherent blithering that was jcr's post. The average salary for a Senior Director is $170,707 per year in United States, which is 65% lower than the average Microsoft salary of $500,742 per year for this job. Here are some thoughts from a L62-er who truly wants to accept whats keeping me from getting to 63 and work on it. I could make changes quickly and with quality. Much longer if new leadership comes from outside MS. Don't perform flawlessly to the above 70+ pieces of feedback only to see the churn above you. You can be a genius of blinding brilliance, but if you come from a boring product team, you "don't have much potential". Your best bet is to help your boss get a promotion. There are the clear execptions and I think you can see this more on the engineering side than sales and marketing.One other piece of advice - be mindful of the impression you make on your bosses peers and others in senior levels of the organizations. Great Post! Otherwise, you start getting limited reviews and your compensation goes down.Obviously there was no advice in this post, but I thought it was an interesting observation, and perhaps the company can learn something from this viewpoint. I am a troll. Great post. Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. Do a great job and you are likely to revise their expectations for the following cycle. No one else was as good. Leverage your professional network, and get hired. Why? But my manager is communicating to me that it is very hard and I am likely to show patience for another year or two.I do not know how to confirm this without looking like whining. My work affected hundreds of developers in our org. You might be too smart or have ideas that come from somewhere outside of Redmond which makes you very dangerous and not Microsoft material. Up until L63, you can pretty continue to be promoted based on raw talent to get things done smartly and efficiently. Will a team that needs exactly the skills and interests that you have pass on you because of some HR guideline? If you go looking for those problems though, you better be prepared to deliver. Know what is going to make your product succeed, know what is going to make your team succeed, know what part of that you can achieve. Seems like "director" in Microsoft is not really a level like it is in google or fb (not sure what it means). Find out if you have a positive trajectory in the stack ranking. But good leadership at the top can make visibility a positive thing for the person getting it and for the org who sees the person getting it. (Senior Project Manager), with 63 (Senior Project Manager) level earning average salary of $247k along with $38k worth of stock options. You are now 20% closer to promotion just by a day of work :). It doesnt matter if the system is fair or not. If he thought you were trouble already, though, telling him you are thinking about leaving is like asking for a ticket out of there.7. Be the Rosh Gadol Microsoftie. But if you can collaborate with others you can help accomplish much more than youll ever be able to accomplish individually. He said this year he could only make strategic promotions, which sounded like promotions of people above 65. Tech savvy yet entrepreneurship minded hence able to see things from . For example, some are principal individual contributors that just stayed for too long in a group and became essential, but now want to move on and cannot do that, either because their skills are obsolete or because they simply cannot go to a new startup team at such high level without any management responsibility, and they are untested managers. So he is looking to become partner this year on the team's work. You have to strive to get the KEY to the boss's heart and brain. Wouldnt my manager get annoyed if I try to go over him to get myself know to VP? Only one can emerge, and not everyone can be a senior simultaneously.