Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-11-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Smart developers mixed with a bozo explosion of Peter-principal managers
Pros: Generally good benefits (though they've been cutting back in recent years).  Very sharp to excellent developers, testers, and PM individual contributors to work with.
Cons: WAY too many managers (and of those, only a small percentage are of any real benefit to their teams or the company).  During my MBA we studied Jack Welsh, former GE CEO and Chief Executive Magazine "CEO of the year".  I recall Welsh noting that "managers should have ten (10) direct reports at the minimum, and 30 to 50 percent more if they are experienced" - that would be 12 to 15 direct-reports for a good manager.  The teams I worked with in Windows Division and Developer Division had only 3 to 5 reports for each manager.  Not only did this create on-going fiefdoms and turf battles but also lead to to excessive micromanagement.  Many managers provided little real value to their team or the company.  (And for many, their overriding focus seemed to be on their next promotion and bonus.)  Customer needs and what was best for Microsoft were frequently sacrificed for bogus features sold to make the manager "look good".  Once released, new products often fell flat so the next year they'd be off pushing some other idea (which often again, didn't meet any real customer needs).  (It seemed that many managers are just going through the motions and putting in time to get their tenured "partner" status.)  I got tired of the silly politics, fiefdoms, turf wars, and micromanagement.  After 7 years at MS I resigned and am now at Google (so far, much better).