Microsoft Reviews

Pros

Great Products - you can be proud of many products that Microsoft brings to market
Many smart people
Better than average pay
Great benefits

Cons

Current performance management system forces RIFs that my not otherwise be needed

Pros

Microsoft offers great benefits (health insurance, 401k, various types of leaves are available) and competitive salaries. Opportunities for career advancement or lateral moves make the work environment in Microsoft very flexible.

Cons

Bureaucracy and politics seem to stifle innovation. Feels like there is no time to execute on a strategy because teams are re-org'd every 18 months. Bad managers abound and there is not much remedy for that except for leaving the job.

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline the company and have divisions work more closely together. Stop making acquisitions that do not make much business sense and are difficult to integrate.

Pros

Money and benefit that is all Microsoft gives.

Cons

Management sucks, big time. So many people to do BS no body to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Do something about so many managers

Pros

You can find a wide range of jobs spanning the company, including overseas (if you're willing to switch to a subsidiary). Great benefits (although health will be much less than what it is today come the end of FY13 (July 2012 to June 2013). Some very smart people around and cool products (based on a wide variety of tastes).

Cons

Getting reorged. In my particular case I was reorged more than 16 times in 6 years. Not in itself a wonderful thing, but in the past two years I was reorged enough times where I was doing something completely different every six months. And the way Microsoft works, you are calibrated against your discipline and if you've been doing something well for a year you'll nearly always trump four months of good work. And not gaining in your job level of a certain window of time will damage your long-term prospects.

Advice to Senior Management

It varies heavily by organization, but my biggest issue was getting reorged so many times that I felt ineffective at doing what I'm good at. How can management address a situation like mine (not uncommon) to ensure I get a fair shake at success?

Pros

Employee Purchase benefit, Work with highly talented individuals, Free starbucks coffee, and Free healthcare.

Cons

Misaligned strategy and execution
Highly political organization
Misdirected management
Overlapping functionality among teams leading to redundancy and cost mismanagement.

Pros

Amazing health insurance and wide range of other benefits make it really hard to contemplate leaving without starting to do the figures in your head. Great diversity of people inside the company, lots of stuff going on that you can get involved in even if it's not your direct job. Lots and lots of interesting people!

Cons

The 'old Microsoft' of being direct and straightforward in voicing concerns, proposing alternatives or opposing the direction being taken is truly gone. If you don't toe the line in your group, you'll become the sacrificial lamb (especially since every group needs one)!

Performance 'reviews' have little to no impact on your salary or prospects for advancement; it's all about whether your boss's boss's boss knows who you are and whether you are viewed as 'good' or 'bad'. Not to mention person leading the group must play their game well enough to get funding for promotions, or hand out career-limitingly low review scores to people who do perfectly good work. Once you find out about 'stack ranking' and that your yearly goals aren't even read by anyone who makes a decision about your review score, you might have a hard time taking this process seriously.

It can be very depressing to work there, given the tendency for upper management to do or say short-sighted or obviously misleading things in public. Not as embarrassing for someone who is not a technologist, but if you are an engineer you will be the sounding board for all of your technical friends & family's complaints.

Advice to Senior Management

Please, for the love of god, bring back some semblance of highly technical leadership instead of MBAs in suits. It's pretty incredible to have someone who understands highly technical concepts leading your group; it's very depressing to see them being replaced one by one with someone who barely understands what your group's software does.

Pros

Microsoft has an outstanding benefits package, and generally respects a clear work/live boundary. There is also generally a lot of support in terms of tools and infrastructure.

Cons

The Microsoft development cycle is painfully slow. Organizational changes happen quite often, so engineers are at a disadvantage when it comes to providing support and/or documentation for their software. The culture seems to have embraced this, rather than creating incentives for collaboration and ownership.

Advice to Senior Management

Microsoft should take a closer look at whether maintaining proprietary and inferior versions of existing open-source tools is worthwhile, and should also consider making greater efforts to foster collaboration between teams.

Pros

Think of selling licensing and software to business as a plumbing job. Microsoft makes great "plumbing" for businesses. I enjoy helping customers build new and interesting stuff based on the technology or "plumping" Microsoft provides. Challenging job and if you can make it through the challenging times, it has the potential to be rewarding.

Cons

Too much information internally and little to no easy way to find what is needed. Little communication from other teams, even though collaboration is a keystone to the company. This tends to make the job very frustrating very quickly.

Documentation of processes to help customers with new purchases/releases is lacking at best.

Advice to Senior Management

Better, more clear communication to staff. It would also be great for Microsoft to "cycle" out the managers that have been in the role for more than 5 years and put in fresh faces/names. I've seen more managers be in the job for 10-20+ years and they don't know how to accomplish anything as they have been disconnected from the sales process for so long. Some of the best managers I have had came straight from sales and knew how to get things done that the senior management teams lacked the knowledge.

Pros

They pay good salary, most people are satisfied

Cons

very busy busy place to work

Advice to Senior Management

be prepare for all the situation

Pros

Benefits (for now-changing in 2013); Brand Name

Cons

Overworked; no Work-Life Balance; Management could care less; Over the past few years, things have progessively worsened; Advancement is all about Politics - who likes you; Management talks about employees bringing ideas to the table, but just air talk; Review Process is too subjective and your career is put into the hands of individuals who will not show support for you or simply have no idea as to what you accomplish on a day-to-day basis/overall basis.

Advice to Senior Management

If you stop worrying about your personal egos & Good ole boy/girl clubs, you might find that you have a great team of employees; Learn to care or at least pretend that you do; Take an interest into career development for each employee (invest in it). Once you take a true interest in your people, you might find that there are some great people getting the job done for you! BUT - you could care less.