HiPo -- for junior to mid level -- special training, networking, and seminars. MiniMSFT comments section mentions this from time to time.
Bench -- for mid to later career, usually on the way to "partner" or above level -- same as HiPo, but may be asked to work on a project with others in Bench, may see attention from VPs mentoring the group.
Neither one had any official impact on ratings, rewards, or career velocity. What they did do, however, was establish an elite and help that elite network across the company.
> Neither one had any official impact on ratings, rewards, or career velocity.
Ah interesting, my understanding was that people who can gone through HiPo were sorta blessed. Then again I guess in theory the people who get selected for HiPo should already be doing the work to make their career velocity look good.
I saw all sorts of interesting stuff while I was at MS. It was a crazy place to work. It was sort of like working at a company that does everything 5-8 years too early, and then tries again 2-3 years too late.
* Tablets * eBooks * MP3 players * Smartphones * Smart TVs (Micorosft bought Web TV in 1997!! That is what, 15-20 years too early?) * Tablets again * Cloud based document syncing (See: What Sharepoint tried to be)
They also made some sort of automation creation tool for business users that, IIRC, got cancelled after one release and replaced with something else. I only know about it because I signed up to do internal user testing for it.
This is on top of all sorts of crazy one off projects. (In 2011 I was on a team attempting to make an autonomous household robot! How long before those become a viable thing outside of Roombas?)
On one hand, it is sort of a good idea if you can truly pick the "winners" (and some of the people who went through the program did amazing things!) but, well, in hindsight I think everyone reading this can see how internal biases would be reflected in who got picked for the program.
I don't know too much about the program, and I don't even remember now what is was called, but engineers who'd been there longer would talk about it sometimes.