MicroStrategy Reviews

Your advice is on target for where we are now - I am sure you know about our initiatives to empower our Field Teams to drive business, a sense of community and collaboration, and fun for our employees. I expect our leaders in the field to take the initiative to drive our culture and to make sure that our feedback loop from customer to product teams (and back) strengthens with time. Thank you for the review and thank you for your commitment to make our workplace better.... MoreLess

Thanks for the review and I am glad to see that you are hearing things are changing for the better - we are working hard on that from the top down! Our goal is to make MicroStrategy the preferred employer in our area (wherever that geographic area may be), grow great careers, and to drive dominance in our market.... MoreLess

Thanks for the review and providing input on what you like and importantly on some of the cons. I do want to highlight a couple of things related to those cons that I think are important as I have done some more research on this and would encourage you, if you are so moved, to provide me more information or context if you disagree or have additional thoughts.

Yes, we have some legacy code. That said, as I have been learning more it is clear to me that our teams are working diligently to re-architect the MicroStrategy Platform and our team has been incredibly productive. Since our 10.5 release, our team has delivered over 1,200 features to the market, which includes introducing our new Dossier capabilities through our Early Adopter program. Our technology team is actively partnering with customers on Dossier, Workstation, Big Data, and MicroStrategy on AWS – seeking early validation of features and capabilities. Each release, we make progress on our platform modernization initiative. I think this work is really exciting, challenging, and innovative. From an innovation standpoint, we realize the stakes involved in not being a leader in our field. We have begun to boost innovation through Hackathons, having our first this year in January at our HQ, then followed in the Spring by one in our China Center. We’re having another Hackathon at HQ the first week of October, and in the second week of October in the CTC. The winners of our Hackathons will have their inventions showcased at MSTR World and ultimately implemented into our product. On top of that, we recognize and reward people with prizes, including monetary rewards.

I would like to think that MicroStrategy is a culture that recognizes and rewards hard work and do think we have a reputation for doing so in the past. I appreciate your highlighting your concerns about favoritism and lack of career paths. We are working on the career path/communication about development options currently to build on those options we have today. Our performance management process does surface a number of good conversations about performance and career progression and I intend to continue to dial up the developmental value of that process over time.... MoreLess

Thank you for the balanced perspective. I visited our Warsaw office this past week and heard some echo's of your concern about career development. Our HR team is in the midst of some work to refresh how we look at careers and the links between our jobs and disciplines. Great careers are supported when organizations can draw some paths for employees that provide the flexibility to grow, stretch, and get out of comfort zones from time to time. At the same time - we have been spending a lot of time talking among our HR and Recruiting team about how to better support the movement of our own employees as new opportunities emerge. We are not at all perfect, I do like that we have a lot of boomerangs who have a rich history with our company, and agree that the path to promotion should not be seen as requiring a leave of the company and then coming back.... MoreLess

Since coming on board - I have been very impressed by our ability to attract amazing people. Your post does concern me as my job is about keeping our amazing people engaged, happy, and productive and my hope is that some of the observations you cite in your cons reflect the fact that we are starting to deploy some new programs at MicroStrategy over the next several months - and while our teams have been hard at work on them, we have not "hit the market" yet.

First - development is key and we are investing significantly in a new quarterly training program for all of our customer-facing employees to ensure they have what they need to be successful. At the same time, we will be working to provide the same level of developmental support to our technical-associates who are responsible for building and maintaining the platform that is at the heart of our reason for being.

We also are focusing more on manager and leadership development. You can see many posts on Glassdoor that site a lack of direction or shifts in business focus. I feel that our team right now is very focused on the continued evolution of our product and providing the best experience to customers in this space. Again - there is more that can be done to support good management and leadership and we are constantly working on those ideas and open to more suggestions from our employees as we roll out new programs.

Finally - MicroStrategy is a place where I think great careers can be built. We are developing some tools that will help our employees better understand career options and what it takes to move from position to position or to different levels. Expect more on this as we move into 2018 though our HR team is actively engaged and working across discipline teams to develop these tools today. I encourage you to reach out to our HR team if you want to help. Regardless of gender, race, or any other categories - MicroStrategy is a place where hard work is and should be rewarded and the best and brightest can be challenged, learn, and excel.... MoreLess

Thank you for this review and the thoughtful Advice to Management. There is a lot of substance to your post and your advice. I want to expand on that advice with a summary reflecting what we have started to do in the past several months since I started here.

We are in the process of adjusting our approach to decision making by putting more decision making authority in the hands of our market teams as well as encouraging all of our employees to feel empowered to make suggestions for improvement and drive innovation. We work in a great space that moves fast - it is clear we need to accelerate how we develop our people and leaders to ensure we maintain and even speed up the pace of innovation - which I believe will lead to market-share growth. We are taking the approach to empowerment and accountability so seriously that my team is working on evolving our performance management practice to include a 360-degree view of performance - holding our leaders most accountable for being reviewed and accountable to feedback first, but ultimately providing this kind of feedback across all levels of our organization. We are working to enhance our culture and work environment - as we do that, I think it does help to post our values on walls, in halls, and remind people of our reason for being and expectations for how to work with each other in a way that is productive and respectful.

Thank you again for your feedback and insights.... MoreLess

Very happy to see your review and that you have enjoyed your experience. We are working on that "micromanagement of the wrong stuff" very actively and encourage you to continue to use your voice to help our work environment continue to improve.... MoreLess

I love and appreciate your positivity. The impact we can all make on this company is potentially profound and glad you are a part of it.

We are working on clarifying career paths for some of our disciplines where we think there is opportunity to better support the ongoing development of our team. I do find our team members to be great and that we owe it to them to work to make their careers as rewarding as possible. There will be more to come over the next several months regarding clarity for key career paths and we will be engaging many across the company for feedback as we build this out.... MoreLess