Microsoft is retiring Perspectives, its internal employee feedback platform that helped workers request input from colleagues as part of its performance review process. According to an internal memo, the company has stopped accepting new feedback requests through the tool. Employees have until September 15 to respond to active requests and export their feedback history before the platform is fully shut down.
The retirement of Perspectives is significant because the tool was closely tied to CEO Satya Nadella's long-running emphasis on growth mindset culture, continuous learning, and a less intimidating approach to feedback. Yet the move comes alongside a broader overhaul of Microsoft’s employee management, which is being simplified into five rating categories.
Microsoft is not abandoning peer feedback altogether, but the company appears to be shifting its focus away from structured feedback requests and toward regular, real-time conversations between managers, employees, and colleagues.
What Is Changing Inside Microsoft’s Review Process?
Perspectives was launched in 2018 as a replacement for Microsoft’s older Feedback Tool, which allowed managers to collect and summarize peer reviews. The newer platform was designed to make feedback feel less formal, giving employees a way to request perspectives from peers, managers, and collaborators during the review cycle.
Unlike traditional review mechanisms, Perspectives positioned feedback as something employees could actively seek rather than passively receive. Responses were shared with both the employee and their manager, giving the company a structured way to incorporate peer input into broader performance conversations. Microsoft also reportedly avoided using the word "feedback" in the tool's name because executives believed it carried negative connotations and wanted employees to engage more openly in the process.
However, Microsoft's preferred approach to feedback now appears to be more direct. The company wants managers and employees to share feedback through regular conversations rather than formal peer reviews, with input delivered during day-to-day work and informal face-to-face discussions.
The shift comes as Microsoft moves to a five-category rating model designed to create clearer differentiation between employees.
The broader direction mirrors a trend across the technology sector, where major employers have become increasingly focused on accountability, productivity, and measurable performance outcomes after years of rapid hiring and expansion.
Is Microsoft Quietly Declaring Formal Feedback Tools a Failure?
The bigger question is whether Microsoft is signaling a loss of confidence in formal employee feedback platforms. For years, the company promoted growth mindset culture, continuous feedback, and tools designed to make employee development more collaborative and less intimidating. Perspectives sat at the center of that philosophy.
Now, Microsoft appears to be arguing that feedback is most valuable when it happens through ongoing conversations rather than through a dedicated platform. That does not mean feedback is becoming less important. If anything, it suggests the company believes feedback should be more natural, immediate, and closely connected to daily work.
The challenge is that formal tools often create formal behaviors. Employees may request feedback because the process requires it, while colleagues may respond because they feel obligated to do so. Over time, what should be a meaningful exchange can become another administrative task within the performance review cycle.
That concern was echoed by Merrill Fernando, Founder of Jozra and a former Microsoft employee, who said:
