Internal Microsoft documents obtained by WashTech News show that Microsoft salaries have been stagnant or nudged only slightly higher over the past two years.

What is causing considerably more ire than pay levels, however, is a performance review ranking system that uses a bell-curve model to decide who gets high scores and who takes the low ones.

According to employees, who said they would be fired if they spoke on the record, the annual review amounts to little more than a closed-door popularity contest in which managers "fight" for higher scores for their team, or defer to higher-level decision makers who mandate how many workers drop to the bottom of the review scale.

One employee in the company's Mobile and Embedded Devices group said when it comes to her review score, "my performance is about 10 percent of the whole equation."