Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-11-03
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Good Pay, Good Co-workers, Talent everywhere
Pros: Working with the brightest and hard working people
50% of the company is sales, marketing, operations; so you don't have to be an engineer to work at Microsoft
Lots of resources to get your job done
Life on campus is excellent, including a health clinic
Women are paid equally
The pay is better than many others
Cons: No talent management:  Each group is an island.   If your job is eliminated, HR doesn't look to see where in the company you might be able to find a similar job, they just say goodbye to you, and loose incredible talent, knowledge, and  institutional knowledge.   This should really bug stockholders that realize this churn is expensive.   There is employee development, just no talent management.

There is a bit of ageism.  Not by factor of age, but by factor of tenure longevity.  Supposedly there is a finance formula that creates targets of longevity, pay, grade, and other factors when a reduction is needed.   In the recent job eliminations in 2014, this theme of more tenured, therefor older, employees are let go, and evident just looking at the people carrying out their boxes.   It was just too obvious.

Women seem to have much slower speed in advancement.  Paid the same, but men move through the ranks quicker.  It is easy to see,  if 29% of the company is made up of women, then why aren't 29% of Midlevel to senior managers women?  The company isn't a startup there are established people of both genders.  The company has 50% sales, marketing, operations, these are not traditionally male centric roles.