Microsoft Reviews in San Francisco, CA Area

Pros

Benefits, stability, compensation, ability to advance your career, commitment to charitable giving, smart people. I'm treated like an adult and left alone to do my job.

Cons

Microsoft is very unpopular in the Bay Area. MS is bit too insular, especially the rank and file who are hired straight out of collage have no frame of reference. The statement "We're the largest software company" isn't a valid argument. Although bringing in outsiders for senior positions is helpful.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep hiring senior managers from outside the company. Become more agile, waiting for the next wave to fix problems isn't the industry norm. SP releases should be the standard, not the exception. Product Managers aren't held accountable, they are reassigned as soon as their wave ships to some product they know nothing about.

Pros

great benefits, great location, and very resourceful for employees. opportunities to travel and get in contact with various people in the industry

Cons

competitive coworkers makes it a hostile working environment for poeple to enjoy work. too many departments resulting in the delay of projects

Advice to Senior Management

did not like virtual team environment and writing bi-annual performance review when it is not necessary - did not make the teams do any better

Pros

Smart and Collaborative Environment - always felt surrounded by competent individuals that were capable of working in teams.

Cons

Indecision with upper management led to layoffs with recent acquisitions.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't buy companies if you don't know what you are going to do them.

Pros

Great benefits and work/life balance are definitely positives. Essentially the perks that make the job worthwhile are top notch compared to most other industries.

Cons

Politics play a big part in determining career path. There isn't much of an on boarding process for new hires.

Advice to Senior Management

Stronger guidance and mentoring within the department that one works at. Perhaps treat youthful energy as a positive rather than a burden.

Pros

Benefits were great, surrounded by knowledgeable people who love their job.

Cons

very redmond-centric. Was sometimes difficult to work with Redmond teams on projects. The company is very Redmond-focused. Performance reviews are a pain.

Advice to Senior Management

A lot of things nee to be streamlined.

Pros

I love working for Microsoft. It's the best job I've had. I'm a high-performer, and have been well compensated for it. I've owned my own company, and have held leadership positions in a variety of different types of orgs and can truly say that, on balance, it's awesome.

Smart, talented people. Fantastic benefits. Great to have stock grants versus options (particularly given the market). Good work/life balance especially if you have a family. High degree of freedom to define your role, and manage your own business as a 'field' employee (versus Corporate).

If you understand how big organizations work, and know how to navigate them, you'll do well here. Where people fall down is assuming they can change the organization without really understanding how it works first.

Cons

The organization is byzantine. It takes, easily, 6 months to begin to understand the basic breakdown between the different groups. It's also hard to find any one spot where you can understand how all the pieces fit together. This can be extremely frustrating initially, and also makes it difficult to find the people you need to in order to accomplish your goal.

Corporate is sometimes slow to respond to either the concerns of the field, or of the customer. Incentives between parts of the organization are sometimes not well aligned. We also tend to be a little too focused on our internal organization versus the needs of the customer.

Advice to Senior Management

Incent management (particularly field) around growth, not on risk management. The company can afford to be much more aggressive, but its management tends to be measured on attainment of quota, etc, without much focus on 'game changers.'

There also has to be an aggressive weeding out of product management that does not take our competition seriously. It's far too easy to get caught up in the Redmond echo chamber.

As a general rule, we need to become more customer focused in everything we do. We also need to be sure to define the customer as not just the enterprise. It's too easy to cater to them, at the expense of the general consumer. This is deadly in the long-run.

Pros

chance to work with great people, to make heroes out of our customers. good management support and communications. plenty of resources available to get the job done. decent pay and benefits package.

Cons

culture of criticism, which in general, rewards the know-it-all personalities and is detrimental to certain 'helping personalities.' one's reputation in this culture is of paramount importance not only with customers, but also with partners and co-workers. most employees recognize this and spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to impress each other, instead of just getting the job done, serving customers.

Advice to Senior Management

respect different working approaches, styles and personalities. have patience for delivering results through a culture based on the Microsoft values. Management by scorecard is not leadership.

Pros

Microsoft is a fantastic company that has a lot of opportunity for career diversity, growth and challenge. The benefits package is second to none. I don't have a co-pay at the Dr, and I get 4 weeks of vacation. For all of Microsoft's faults, the company really does take to heart all of the criticism of the industry and I have never seen a company where customer satisfaction is so important.

A lot of people love to hate Microsoft because of some boneheaded decisions that we have made in the past and for decisions that we continue to make in small pockets. Don't sterotype the whole company because of this, and also don't stop giving us feedback. We need to hear it,

Cons

We don't always think before we act. You see this in moves that are made public and then retracted because somebody didn't realize that their actions were visible. The internet has created unbelievable transparancy, and we need to do a better job of thinking through all of our industry moves.

Advice to Senior Management

think before you act. Keep on pushing the innovation envelope. We can always do better.

Pros

Impact, relevance, position and drive to be a leader in the software industry makes Microsoft a great company to work for and enables all people, processes, companies, governments and organizations that use Microsoft software to realise their full potential.

Cons

Big, slowing down and not as efficient as it once used to be. Also Microsoft can't have being first to market as its #1 goal. Instead quality must be #1 since the cost of a mistake especially with security of its products impacts more people than any other software company on the planet. Customers just demand and expect more from Microsoft than any other software company.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce the overhead in between the product groups and field sales. There are too many marketing, business development and overlay positions in the company that exist to "simplify processes and communciations up and down" but in reality this is contributing to delays in getting information out from Redmond to the field and vice versa and its coming at a hige expense.

Pros

Career Opportunities and training is great here

Cons

Can be demanding at times and you have to manage your work/life. So much to do around here

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to increase pay and be more competitive with other companies