Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-01-31
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Good company but can't help making things hard for itself.
Pros: - Overall package is very good - salary, bonuses and benefits.
- Good work/life balance, if you are in the right division or have the right manager.
- Has the potential to do great things and still has some amazing products.
Cons: - Microsoft has to burn itself. Even when the correct decision is obvious to all staff, senior management seem to get it wrong before backtracking to get it right.
- The business is set up for its employees to fail. Even if a team exceeds all goals, stack ranking means 20%+ have to fail. It's incredibly damaging for a company to ensure failure at all costs.
- Many tiers of middle management that add very little and drive against change for self preservation. 
- To be successful you need to spend 70% of your time managing your internal brand and 30% of your time doing your job and driving success for the business. 
- Over the recent years, more smart people have left than have joined.
- Culturally, the business has a rotten core that is going to take years to cleanse.