Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-12-02
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Senior Program Manager
Pros: * ability to learn new things, and move around the company if desired.
* many experts in all fields, so opportunity for those who are aggressive and go after it.
* pay is fair, but not the highest against competators right now.
* if you try and are luck to align with a good manager, you can have work/life balance.  Its dependant on the Manager and GM you report to more than anything else.
* Healthcare coverage for my family is good with Premera Blue Cross.
Cons: * Annual payroll amount for Healthcare went from $0 to $5K in recent years, no one remembers or even considers this a problem.  Thanks Obamacare!  And my wife's doctor and my doctor have retired in the past year in their own words because of the mess in healthcare regulations.
* Stack Ranking went from Overt to Covert in my organization.  Employees spend most of their capital to get 'recognized' for their own work vs. working with others to have all of us succeed.  
* Therefore, it's changed back to being 'too competitive' to be enjoyable any longer.
* way, way too many india vendors and employees have come in thru the visa programs.  We are flooded with HCL and other large vendor companies bring more and more india vendors onboard, and I approve and fill out all these documents to support it.  Still struggle after the past 5+ years of this model, to get even 1/2 the productivity and value from a co-worker or vendor than all the peers that were laid off in this time and are still struggling to work out there.  
* I know many that it were laid off that it broke their spirit and confidence soo much.  Still sad.
* Managing healthcare bills is so much more complex and time consuming that several years ago when Premera did this.  It takes much more work time away from the job to tack and re-submit and deal with these items.  Again, nobody is listening as I always submit the feedback and they only say 'this is the new normal'....and some other excuse.