(YESTERDAY, our guest columnist began a resignation letter to Microsoft she never got around to sending. Today, she continues, with a discussion of the company's periodic employee "Reviews.")
Areas I need work on as a human being are elaborated upon by wealthy morons who think a game of hackysack and wearing shorts at work is a form of intellectual social rebellion. I'm given a number between one and five. Apparently five is unattainable. So much so, that there are rumors Bill Gates himself presents you with a bonus check if you get it. (Amounts of the check varied from $5,000 to $25,000, depending on who told me.)
If your parents didn't give you a structure, rewards, allowances, or punishments, don't worry. You can get them all from Microsoft. Microsoft is full of bonuses at work, penalties, reviews and latte cards doled out by condescending older-brother-like bosses who will play darts and get drunk with you on those lonely weekend nights. You don't ever have to grow up.
A coddled adolescense is part of the Microsoft persona. You'll fit right in, especially if you are one of those non-conforming conformists who likes to defiantly wear a button that says "fuck authority" while blindly obeying it.
The difference between this and high school is that in high school the kids KNOW the report cards, detention, pep rallies, and idiotic structures are bullcrap. Teenagers know they aren't commodities, but human beings. Microsoft employees accept that they are a commodity, while deluding themselves to think they're software "rebels" of some sort. They're in a revolutionary company at a revolutionary time (in the best of all possible worlds).
And if you don't buy it, you won't be hired. No wonder most Microsofties are under 30.
My "Team Leader" reviewed me (not my "boss," that would be too realistic a term for a company which feeds on illusions).
I hardly worked for him. I don't know where he got all his wordy comments. He said I didn't know the product thoroughly enough, which was bullshit. I lamely decided that to confront my boss would be to acknowlege the whole gullible corporate acceptance of The Review. But it changed me. Deep down, I accepted that I was an inferior "product" in some way. I think that was when I started working weekends.
The full-time employees get to review themselves first; then they give their scores to their team leader, who gives the final score. It's all such incredible horse manure. It's a highly intense, six-page summary evaluating everything from personal flaws to five-year goals. All the full-timers have their door closed. On that day there is a group email: "Do not disturb the full-timers; time for the yearly reviews."
"Why don't you just give yourself all fives?" I nonchalantly asked a co-worker, obviously absorbed in self-loathing at his desk. He looked up from his six-page summary of his own personal flaws and said, "I could NEVER do that!" This is a guy who works 60 hours a week and most weekends. He's 25. He invented some brilliant program which saved the company some money; so it's not like I'm asking him to vainly toot his own horn.
That's cool, I thought, Microsoft gets him to sacrifice his youth, and then convinces him though a series of "Microsoft Lifestyle" seminars that he'll never really be worthy.
I walk away from his office, closing his door as per his request. I'm walking away, and I'm wondering how bad he feels about himself.
I'm wondering how he's going to try and make it up to the company next year--maybe by working 80-hour weeks this time. Maybe he'll work every weekend next year.
I walk, and I keep walking. He'll be a millionaire when he's 35. A million isn't good enough, he says; he'll retire when he has 3 million (today's economy, you know).
I've past my own door now. It's really easy to keep walking.
He views himself as a product now, a commodity in six pages. At 35, sex will be a long-lost dream to him. It is for me, and I've only been here a year.
My free latte card falls from my hand, a two-dollar piece of my soul.
Now I'm outside, in the Redmond "Campus" ("office park" in regular English). The "Three Flags" fly overhead--that's the United States flag, the Washington State flag, and the Microsoft flag.
"Where do youwant to go today?" It asks.
Don't know where I'm going today. Never did.
I only know where I'm not going.
TOMORROW: Requiem for an afternoon newspaper.
IN OTHER NEWS: The one sports team what was supposed to never threaten to move has just threatened to move (found by Obscure Store and Reading Room).
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