Microsoft Reviews in Redmond, WA

Pros

1) Ample job oppurtunities
2) Experienced managers
3) Technically strong people around

Cons

1) Very big company, it takes a lot of time to gain visibility

Pros

Respect your knowledge and expand the experiance

Cons

need to work with same technology

Pros

- Opportunity to work on any technology that you are interested in
- Opportunity to grow vertically as well as horizontally (generalist)
- Benefits
- Corporate citizenship (MSFT encourages you to contribute to your cause in more than one ways)
- Super smart and passionate people to work with

Cons

- Some groups are very bureaucratic
- Certain lack of agility in getting things done (very subjective depends on which group you work on)
- At times the criteria for promos is very fuzzy
- Compensation as measured by base pay

Pros

nice people, you can get all your answers from different people, so it is not bad at all, and so many smart people

Cons

food is not that great. it seems like not a lot of people see the big picture, company kind of move slow

Advice to Senior Management

need focus on social and mobile, window phone need to be great and social factor needs to be there also

Pros

You get to learn how to work at a large company, work with super-smart people, and interesting products like xbox etc.

Cons

Working at a large company, it's difficult to make a big difference or have an impact on big decisions if you're new.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice if leadership made more of an effort to make the company's long-term strategy clearer to its employees.

Pros

- High impact work and responsibilities;
- Exciting and motivational environment;
- Corporate visibility and recognition in the world;
- Excellent resources available;
- International exposure;
- Great pay and benefits;

Cons

- Long and hard hours;
- Small fish in a big pond;
- A complex corporate culture;
- Limited opportunity to work remotely;
- Too much regional autonomy;
- Inconsistency in licensing;

Advice to Senior Management

Create apprentice opportunities rather than starting everyone, regardless of experience, as a manager. Less emphasis on regional autonomy with more consistency internationally. Less emphasis on individual product licensing and performance and greater emphasis on consistency of licensing and policies across products and regions. This provides greater assurance to customers and partners.

Pros

Good benefits, competiive salary, good about work/life balance, really intelligent people, diverse employees with international ties, ability to work remotely a huge plus.

Cons

Bureaucratic, tough to make a lasting impression, or infuse new ideas. Too many checks and balances. Found it difficult to get promoted, or move up in different positions, as company did a lot of external hirings for jobs I was interested in...despite my solid reviews.

Advice to Senior Management

Please try to do your best about promoting within. Not only does it help employee morale, but it allows people to work harder, and since they have the most intimate knowledge of the business, they just might surprise you.

Pros

- Interesting technologies and lots of software development everywhere
- run by engineers
- vast opportunities to work on different kinds of products and technologies
- great, intelligent and happy people

Cons

- too much politics or management gets in the way of shipping great products
- too hesitant to ship interesting ideas unless its $10B business
- benefits are steadily declining
- new review model sucks

Pros

Working at Microsoft will up your game like almost no other workplace.

You'll be working with industry luminaries and extraordinarily talented colleagues. Many of those that you'll work with LITERALLY wrote the book!

The products you create typically touch the lives of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world. What you work on (typically) matters - to you, to Microsoft and to the people who use your products.

Cons

Working at Microsoft can be challenging. Middle-management is hit and miss - some managers are fabulous. Many are ... well ... they're not best suited to be managers.

Microsoft's review process can be pretty brutal.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest with your employees about the review process, distributions & the bell curve. Be honest about cutting heads that aren't a good fit for MS.

Pros

1. Access to resources 2. Availability of information 3. Agressive work environment

Cons

1. Depending on business bureaucracy can slow down growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more resources on Innovation