It's about politics just as much as AI investment - Content Strategist Microsoft Employee Review

Preface - Received my first LITE (MS PIP) after over three years with the company, two weeks before the May 2025 layoffs -The low performance claim was based mainly on brand new tasks, involving only three weeks of training for tasks on platforms with which I had no familiarity. Furthermore, despite receiving instruction to not include future ongoing/new tasks for this Connects (performance review) season, and training having only begun three weeks before the Connects call took place, these tasks occupied a significant portion of my performance evaluation for this Connects. One of these tasks centered around a tool that I verified via screenshare with the co-worker training me that it was providing incorrect numbers despite correct inputs, something I immediately remedied upon some lengthy troubleshooting but could not have known prior. I was also cited for not updating tags on a handful of content, when I had originally only been instructed to update the tag for one article. I then immediately remedied this once learning the additional tags were necessary, but not before the co-worker who trained me copied our manager on an email laying out these issues rather than addressing me about them first. -Retroactive reasons given for low performance, counter to evidence: Another reason given for the LITE was allegedly not creating a user feedback synthesis with which I was tasked to create alone – even though I had created it alone, only for management to instruct another co-worker to create a second synthesis to which the whole team would contribute. When I asked, I was given no reason why they were not using my version, nor informed that this had been formally updated into a team effort (which evidently come this Connects season, it had been reverted to only my task again). Notwithstanding, I still contributed most of the content to the synthesis and organized a prototype design to propose a product feature based on the synthesized customer feedback. -Retroactive reasons for low performance #2: It was claimed that I was taken off of a reports-based role due to “repeated glaring issues”, yet at the time, this was not given as the reason. At the time, I was juggling most of the reports for the team due to time zone, and those who took over from me have experienced similar occasional complaints from our partner team, suggesting issues that had arisen under my watch over an extended period just appeared to be repeated/numerous, as I was carrying most of that effort. Most of these issues involved technical trouble with our content management system which were debilitating enough that we had to migrate platforms, with the others mainly being our partners not wanting our team to conduct such meticulous reviews (despite this having been the review style on which I and others who joined around the same time were trained and having been docked once for allegedly not reviewing one report closely enough upon return from parental leave, I committed even more strongly to thoroughness). Instead, I was told at the time that I was taken off reports, because they needed someone full-time for another initiative. For the past year, I have received wonderful feedback on metrics goals I have achieved with this program. However, after being the only one on the team to not receive a raise or promotion despite only positive Connects/bonuses over three years at the company and seven years of previous industry experience, during our previous Connects season in December 2024, I asked what I could do to improve and was told that I needed more visibility and given a rundown of the role/band's subjective expectation categories - all of which I was able to speak to. To improve impact, I joined another initiative to enhance my existing initiative. The positive feedback received from three different Perspectives (peer reviews) regarding innovation for driving customer success and revenue were ignored and for the most part, this customer success and visibility initiative was discouraged by direct management. -Perspectives potentially influenced by management: A co-worker who is a senior on my team but who has never managed or trained me before the past three weeks working on one of these new tasks framed their feedback as if they were my manager, summing up my entire career at Microsoft and claiming I should be much further than I was, despite never having worked with me directly or overseen my tasks prior to the past month. They referenced a tool we have never used in our work together (but that another co-worker in their time zone has which suggests collaboration in writing this critique but was already covered by the other co-worker in their Perspective) and deliverable types we never worked on together. Furthermore, I was called out for “recurring” issues which were actually all unique from each other and stemming from lack of prior awareness (such as being told that required information was in the training video when it wasn’t, and that I made an inconvenient oversight in an email when it turned out the email in question was actually in an entirely different thread sent earlier on). By and large, while mitigating these hiccups are my responsibility and I am always ready to do so, some could not have been avoided until other factors came to light, so they seem to have been used as a paper trail to reflect negligence. I had suspected that collaboration might have been occurring behind the scenes when the Connect Tool during last Connects season informed me that management had requested me to ask for a Perspective from a teammate with whom I hadn’t worked in two years but who was a principal member of the team, despite my having already requested Perspectives from five different folks. I was ultimately thankful for this peer’s feedback, as it was overall quite constructive and said that I took feedback very well, which countered what my manager’s comments have claimed - even if the feedback was regarding a task on which I no longer worked (hence us not having collaborated for two years). This could have been at the time due to the situation not being as dire as initially expected last Connects season, despite the performance-based layoffs already kicking off at the time. Once again, it would have been more lucrative to just explain that the report reviewing style (the only capacity in which we worked together) had changed rather than sequester me to a narrow role that has evidently minimal visibility. While I understand that Microsoft is in a tough spot with these performance-driven and RIF layoffs, I wanted to craft this response, following a Connects call that was very rushed and had such poor audio quality from the manager’s side that I had to rely more on reading the comments than conversing and was not able to pose any questions before they had to end the call. I wanted to summarily assure that, despite my layoff, our team goals and my career at Microsoft have meant so much to me, and that, despite taking parental leave, I have remained ever-committed.