The Mini-Microsoft blog has an entry entitled 6% raise? I want to work for Dilbert's company! where he writes

Holy whatsa, Alice got a 6% raise ? I'd seriously consider hanging out in the bushes near Google-Kirkland with my aluminum bat to totally Tonya-Hardin-up some delicate competitive fingers just to get a 6% raise.

If you're a lead, you can bring up the manager review tool and check-in on how your reports are doing within The Model. Maybe some bits and pieces will move around, but the review model is pretty much done now and set to go into effect the 1st of September, with the mid-September paycheck showing any benefits.

One thing I've noticed kvetching with other managers is that once again, pay raises are minimal. I'm talking 2%-ish for a 3.5 review. That's barely keeping up with cost-of-living / inflation for doing more than is expected up of you. And of course, 3.0s, for the most part, get nothing. That's right: you're losing buying power for making a 3.0 - doing what's expected of you.

The poor quality of yearly raises was one of the reasons I decided to leave the XML team last year. I realized that no matter how hard I worked, I wouldn't be significantly financially compensated for going above and beyond what I was required to do. Given that I'm an "above and beyond" kinda guy I saw two choices; I could be underpaid or I could be underpaid and work on stuff I was passionate about. So I moved to MSN.

After doing some thinking during my vacation I concluded that MSFT isn't the kind of place I can see myself working at in 5 years. One of the repurcussions of this conclusion is that I'm going to start working on getting an MBA so I can broaden my options whenever I decide that the time has come for me to leave the B0rg cube. Of course, the nagging from my folks about when I'm going to grow up (get married, finish my education, etc) helped in coming to this decision.

Bah! Going back to school is going to suck.