Microsoft Reviews in Seattle, WA Area

Pros

An international thinking company with lots of opportunity. Pay is OK and benefits are great. Company tries harder than most to treat staff well.

Cons

Review process is competitive with your peers. This means they gain if you lose and leads to "invisible" back stabbing and lack of collaboration. Staff is group ranked by a commitee of their managers peers. Most of them are not involved in the same business and don't know the people. Good ranking comes from either:
1) "Visibility" - which means that lots of internal (possibly non-productive) activities like joining social events and schmoozing with your bosses peers.
or
2) "Political games" - where an experienced senior manager makes side deals with some of his peers to mutually support each other favorites for good ranking.

Advice to Senior Management

The current numerically structured review process was likely created because the managers couldn't be trusted to know how to review their people. An obvious outcome when technical prowess lead to leadership roles. It's time to make sure that leadership at all levels is good at people management and responsible for the people under them. Having a high performance team get exactly the same number of 'Winners and Losers' as an under-performing poorly led team is not a solution to ensuring the poor teams don't rank themselves highly.

The company is good at talking about collaboration but the policies make this into a farce. I left because of the review process and seeing great people suffer while the best internal schmoozers did little for products or customers but got highly rewarded.

I like Ballmer's energy and spirit but he needs to fix this or have someone else do it.

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

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

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

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.

Pros

good place to work as long as you have a good boss

Cons

departments and employees are more interested in making their numbers and committments than in doing what's right for the company overall. So this doesn't foster a cooperative environment. people spend an awful lot of time and energy "reporting up" versus doing actual work.

Advice to Senior Management

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Pros

Some of the brightest brains in the industry.
Lot of knowledge and scope
Variety of technologies to work on.

Cons

Performance Review System is bad.
Promotions system is not transparent
Compensation is not good
Management leaders dont have technical expertise.
Lot of politics

Advice to Senior Management

Promote team work and reduce rivalry.
Have more collaboration between groups.
Have more technical people in the management ladder

Pros

At the end of the day this is still one of, or the, largest software companies in the world. There are incredible opportunities to work on software that is used by an incredible number of people world wide.

Cons

Management has become entirely disconnected from the workforce, at times it seems that they are stuck in the late nineties and think that employees are becoming millionaires overnight and should be grateful for the priviledge of working at the company. The reality is that the shareprice has been flat or worse for over 10 years and the job has become a way of paying the bills for most employees

Advice to Senior Management

The board should resign for failing to ask Ballmer to resign. Every employee at partner level or above should undergo a complete 360 review to keep their job. Cronyism needs to be eliminated root and branch.

Pros

- Good benefits
- Smart folks
- Pacific Northwest is a nice place if you have a family

Cons

- Office politics
- Lots of internal tools/technology. You don't get experience on industry standard tools.
- Small town feeling, not a good place for singles.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to break down the company for better management.