Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-05-10
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Dying at 5% per year
Pros: Good pay, bennies and some good people.  New CEO trying to turn around an aging ship and he has energy and is not old and is technical
Cons: Many roles have a 5% forced attrition rate meaning that every year the bottom 5% must go. This was adopted from GEs management of factory floor assembly workers and does not apply well in the field I work in. Oddly enough middle management and some other teams are not subjected to this but technical resources are and the evaluation is typically done by non technical managers who have no idea who's good and who's bad. The market for skilled experienced engineers is finite and with this policy Microsoft is only making it difficult for them to stay competitive as more talent leaves than comes in.  I've seen some pretty pathetic new hires recently simply because less talent is interested and the limited pool of resources has been polluted by this arbitrary and obsolete standard.