In about 10 years I'm going to need to find a new job. I never figured I'd do this forever, lord knows I'd die of stress long before standard retirement age, but it's a little odd to actually know your upper limit. It works like this; if I get hired on full time at Microsoft (a given if I want it) then I start the whole review/bonus/promotion cycle. It seems that corporate policy around here is that if you get above average on your reviews it's basically impossible for them to not give you more money. What am I complaining about, right? Well unless you move into management (something I don't think I'd want to do even if I could handle dealing with people well enough) then there is a hard cap to how high of a job position you can attain in microsoft. Technical positions only go up so high and eventually - after about 10 years - if you haven't moved to management it basically just becomes too expensive to have you stay around. They can't pay you more becaues your job has a hard salary limit, but they can't Not pay you more because of the review/bonus/promotion cycle. So you get the boot.
10 years is a long time though, and I never really pictured doing this more than like 7 years, but before it was my decision to stay or not. Oh well, looks like I'll have to start studying for my next career sooner than I thought :)
10 years is a long time though, and I never really pictured doing this more than like 7 years, but before it was my decision to stay or not. Oh well, looks like I'll have to start studying for my next career sooner than I thought :)
