The 'Growth at all costs' culture is finally burning us out

I remember when Microsoft felt like a place where you could build a career rather than just a temporary landing spot. The obsession with quarterly optics has completely eroded the sense of stability that once defined the internal culture. It is discouraging to watch talented, long-term veterans walk out the door because leadership prefers to chase short-term trends instead of investing in the people who actually maintain the infrastructure. When you treat humans as interchangeable variables in a budget equation, you eventually lose the institutional knowledge that made the company great in the first place.

Honestly, the shift toward a pure focus on bottom-line efficiency is exhausting for everyone involved. It feels like every month brings another round of cuts while executive compensation continues to climb regardless of the morale hit. The irony is that they preach long-term growth while acting in the most short-sighted way possible by purging departments that have been profitable for years. It is becoming impossible to justify staying when the company no longer demonstrates even a baseline level of loyalty to its workforce. Many of us are simply done waiting for things to get better.