Principal Bank – “anonymous”

Pros

The people! Diverse, intelligent, opinionated and extremely knowledgeable. If you want to be surrounded by people that actually *know* every single thing about computers and software, there's no other place.

Microsoft has many worlds inside itself. If you change from one team to another, is like changing from one company to another, everything is totally different. So if you're bored with one aspect of technology, change to a different group and learn about other stuff without leaving company.

The benefits are mostly great (see exceptions at the list of downsides), in special the medical benefits.

It is inspiring to work in products that are used by millions (and in some cases billions) of people.

Cons

The worst problem we have is our senior leadership. What's the point of working extreme long hours to contribute to the company when they come with preposterous ideas like buying Yahoo!?

As for the benefits, the top 900 people earn loads of stocks that vest immediately (1/3 immediately, then the other thirds in 2 years) while for everyone else the stocks vest after 1 year, then spread in the next 5 years. Last year we've spent 1 billion dollars in stock for the top 900!

There's no transparency on how people's performance are reviewed, the only clear thing is that it is a popularity contest where the management friends are rewarded and everyone else hang on tight because of the benefits. Then if you spend some time without promotion, your chances for promotions diminish dramatically because you're labeled "with low career velocity".

Internally we know that we are just like IBM in the 80s: a company that just got rid of a host of anti trust issues, with a huge hierarchy, ossified processes all over and so very slow to respond to the competition.

That's because the only way to grow professionaly is by becoming a manager. So people that should and people that shouldn't be a manager are fighting hand and fist to become one. Then we have more hierarchy, and the monster feeds itself...

Advice to Senior Management

Give up the Yahoo! adventures.

Cut the hierarchy: we don't need so many layers of management! In my career at Microsoft, the minimum distance I got from Stever Ballmer is 9. That's because some managers in the chain left Microsoft after pocketing their millions.