The Crypto Penguin

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft ($MSFT) is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees. This will impact roughly 27% of its workforce. Terminations will focus on vice presidents and below across designated teams in the US, Canada, India, and the UK. Microsoft employees are learning that they are completely replaceable - their job titles, skills, and experience are irrelevant. The truth about working in corporate: 1. People only sell their life away for a salary because they don’t know a tax-efficient or time-efficient way to make money. 2. Your job title doesn’t matter. It was made up by marketing. The only job titles that matter are Shareholder or Owner. 3. Employee awards are made from $19 of glass, wood, and plastic. Once they engrave your name on it, it’s worth $0.09. 4. You’re not getting a good raise. It makes no sense to pay more for a worker who will never leave. 5. Raises will never match inflation in order to give profit to shareholders, not employees. 6. Your compensation was set by a budget committee a year ago. You’re not going to “overachieve” anything. You’re paid exactly what shareholders want you to be paid, no more. 7. A salary is the drug they use to make you forget about your dreams of independence. You’re an addict. 8. Human Resources is not your friend. HR isn’t there for you. It’s there to protect the company. 9. Your real job is to use the money they pay you to invest or build a business to replace your employer. 10. Without financial education, you are just working to pay bills and taxes, and to make politicians and shareholders richer. 11. You don’t have coworker friends. You have friendly coworkers. Know the difference. 12. You’re not indispensable. Saying that the company would need to hire three people to replace you isn’t a flex. It means that you’re underpaid. The cemetery is filled with “indispensable” employees. 13. People hire and promote those whom they know and like. Hard work is beside the point. Performance reviews are massaged to say whatever the company wants them to say. You never actually hit a target; management just paints circles around whatever their favorite employee achieves. 14. To say that you’ve been with the same company for 15+ years is sad. It means that someone with your skillset and experience is getting paid much more than you. Now you know. Aren’t you glad someone told you? Microsoft employees are.