Microsoft Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Pros

Smart people
Great technology
Lots of learning resources
Many internal job opportunities in HQ

Cons

Too much process overhead for well established team.
Too much bureaucracy in some big organizations.
Unreasonably enforced curve for performance review.
Extremely hard to climb up ladder in some big money making groups.
For IC role, experience doesn't matter much. Some group even prefers new graduates.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward hard-working talent, drop the dumb curve. Save time from ridiculous time consuming calibration. Treat talents with respect. Cut some stupid processes which is used just to show some non technical managers did work.

Pros

Paycheck. Paycheck. Paycheck. Paycheck. Paycheck.

Cons

Demoralizing, overly competitive, backstabbing work environment.

Pros

Good benefit
Great individual contributors around you
Solid process

Cons

Too many processes
Health benefit is changing
People get pushed to show visibility and that dips into your time and effort in assuring product quality

Advice to Senior Management

People are voting with their feet.

Pros

Very flexible, informal environment where it's about results vs face time

Cons

Extremely poor leadership and decision making - lack of conviction and courage.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus!!!

Pros

The medical benefits are unmatched. Zero co-pay and up to $15,000 of fertility treatment. However, this is all going to change next year.

Cons

There are a lot of internal politics. Projects can get cut at any moment and without warning. Not customer focused. A lot of work gets moved to offshore teams.

Advice to Senior Management

In the QA organization, there should be a balance of black box and white box testers. White box tests usually do not want to work on the UI/UX.

Pros

great benefits, training classes, access to resources

Cons

lot of interesting roles and opportunies are in Redmond. Silicon valley is mostly a collection of acquisitions with empahsis on R&D and tapping in silicon valley talent

Advice to Senior Management

make subisidiary integration better

Pros

The benefits at Microsoft were good.

Cons

There was constant change of management in the organization I was in, and this left employees with little faith in the overall direction of the business unit.

Pros

1. a famous company which might highlight your working experience in your resume
2. employee has his/her own office ( might be an office with no windows)
3. its own library with books
4. many talent colleagues you could learn from

Cons

penny cheap - do not expect good salary or bonus

tons of politics - you notice the something weird but you never know why

no respect to employee, managers yelling at you often and never satisfied (you could imagine why because they are also being abused and disregarded the same as you), humiliating and insulting words like "we have high standards", "you are supposed to know", "you only meet our minimum requirement", ( yes, they have high standard but low salaries and want to compete with G, what a joke! )

monthly commitment - you are required to write down tasks you must finish. even if it's delayed or not done due to bad plans , it's your fault and put on the final review because "you're supposed to know"

Advice to Senior Management

be good to your employee and you will be rewarded back with productivity. do not treat your employee as slaves

Pros

* Paychecks are never late/checks never bounce
* Good health insurance, but not after 2012...

Cons

* Outdated process learned from Windows & Office; struggles to work on the Web (Waterfall)
* Slow and rigid release cycles
* Outdated internal tools & processes, doesn't keep up with the world outside of MSFT and has fallen behind
* Very political, lots of internal competition
* Bonuses & Promotions incentivize only shipping on time, not quality and not our customers
* Managers act more like accountants than engineers; they only know how to cut costs but lack in innovation and vision
* Most of all, people aren't passionate about what they're doing or the product they're working on. Just a paycheck for most.

Advice to Senior Management

Sometimes experience from the past era is a liability. MSFT needs fresh blood from the outside, not just interns who don't know any better.

Pros

Great Benefits across the board
Great people at the delivery level
Lots of training/learning opportunities
Multiple product lines give variety of opportunities

Cons

Judged, on what you didn't do rather than what you did do
Promote technical people to management positions, with few/no people skills
Very Dev driven organization

Advice to Senior Management

Hire managers that understand how to get the most from people
Not everyone has to be a Dev, you need different people with different skill sets for non Dev positions
Don't review people based on the few things they don't accomplish, look at all the things they do accomplish