Microsoft – “It Ain't What It Used To Be...”

Pros

Great, smart, friendly people, big company involved in many areas (a pro and a con), excellent benefits.

Cons

In the 10 years I've been at Microsoft, the company has more than doubled in size, bureacracy has increased by an order of magnitude, and many great engineers have left for better opportunities elsewhere. We're involved in EVERYTHING and screwing it up because due to the continuous over-promising and outright lying by mid-level execs to their managers. There are too many people wyo are not engineers working for this engineering company, and they are NOT the folks at the front who have accounted for virtually all of those laid off.

Advice to Senior Management

Change from the top down. If you want to "cut the 10 percent" every year, apply that to those at the top also, like Jack Welch did. And stop screwing around with these "trios" or "triads" - you can't build anything by committee.