Microsoft Reviews in Seattle, WA Area

Pros

Very flexible in time and vacations

Cons

Work/life balance is not available if you're looking for a promotion

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage and coach your employee to excell

Pros

There are some very smart, passionate people working there. When you're on a good team it doesn't seem like work. Employees feel excited and empowered. The pay and benefits are good and many people have their own office.

Cons

Your career growth and rewards are highly dependent on how well you get along with you manager, how much they'll fight for you, and how well they know how to work the system and how effective they are at it. Depending on your organization, there can be a lot of reorgs and your experience and time at Microsoft account for 0 if the leadership doesn't know you. Lately, Microsoft has been making sweeping changes such as "a person must be at X number level to have Y position" despite whether or not individuals have been working in and doing well at Y positions for years. Rather than promote the individual to the new level requirement, they are told they can no longer have that position.

Advice to Senior Management

Changes in leadership have changed the company from a place where employees felt open to challenge each other and do amazing things to a company where employees just want to work the system for promotions and titles. Employees in various orgs fear that challenging their management leads to destroyed career paths. Leadership should not just look at those who manage up well, but look down into the company and see how the culture is changing...and not in a good way.

Pros

Great work life balance
Energetic people

Cons

Get lost in the crowd

Advice to Senior Management

More 1-1s to promote growth

Pros

The scale of the products like Windows, Office, Xbox, etc is very inspiring and challenging. You'll appreciate the process of designing, building and testing.

Cons

Progress might not be as fast-paced as some startups or smaller companies. Your responsibilities too might be limited and it takes hard work and a lot of time to gain recognition and move up the ladder.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the review process more transparent. Also, communicate the rationale and perspective behind big decisions. Make the workplace more social.

Pros

Ton of opportunities to advance in professional expertise. Support to move around within the company. Excellent benefits, and good pay package

Cons

Limited coordination between product groups. Limited interaction with senior leadership. Very limited opportunities to look outside and implement best practices.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on cross-collaboration between product groups. Make compromises as necessary fo rthe sake of consistency of operations. Ask Ballmer to leave - his leadership hurts the company's image.

Pros

Good learning place. Jobs are challenging. Great people to work with.

Cons

Hierarchies are too deep and it is difficult to employees to influence the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Move faster and innovate more.

Pros

Smart employees with interesting backgrounds

Cons

Management sucks and it all goes down from here

Advice to Senior Management

Get a life

Pros

Benefits are amazing - but are changing in January to be more in line with the rest of the world.

Cons

Senior Managers are in it for themselves, unless you are well connected - you have no chance of movement - even between groups managers hold your future in their hands and limit movement based on their needs to keep you around.

Pros

1. Great work environment
2. Lots of smart people
3. Interesting technical challenges
4. Opportunity to work in a multitude of product areas
5. Respectful of employees
6. In spite of being a mature company, competes hard and adapts constantly to industry challenges.

Cons

1. Lack of clear direction in the past few years leading to the company falling behind in new areas
2. Entrenched culture that might make it difficult to move quickly in new areas
3. Constant worry among employees about performance review
4. Could better promote team success more over individuals.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Provide clear direction in terms of product areas
2. Promote new ideas and challenge to the entrenched culture more aggressively
3. Talk to the employees and see how performance reviews could be improved
4. Promote "team" accomplishments

Pros

The work you do is great, has impact and is fulfilling. People at your level are great and collaborative. Upper management is usually available for conversations and listening to you ... read the cons related to this

Cons

upper management takes time to listen to you but that's all they do. There is usually very little they will actually do to help you with where you want to go and who you want to be. So the motto "Your potential our passion" (this is the older one) is not really alive on the day to day level. Once you get in at a position, make sure it's something you like, cause moving around takes a lot of politics etc.

Advice to Senior Management

The biggest difference I see in Microsoft and other companies now is that Microsoft is outsourcing a lot of work to vendors. These guys (and I've been there) are naturally not invested in the company. FTE's think they can give the grunt work to vendors and cruise themselves. This is false perception. All work that needs to be done needs to be done with passion and diligence; most vendors just can't do that because of how they're treated (can be let go of at any point without reason). Invest in hiring good people like Microsoft used to, keep the work with passionate FTE's and see how Microsoft will come back as a top technology company!