Company: Microsoft
Date: 2009-07-17
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Not a great place to work if you want to build a compelling product
Pros: Benefits are simply great. Managers seem to be given the mandate to treat employees with respect, no matter how much they are faking it. If you are not happy at your job, you are given all the support in the world to move to a new role.
Cons: Where to begin, let's begin from the top. Executive management is horrible. No vision and market knowledge whatsoever. Too many middle managers, I mean way too many. Even at the CVP level, I believe there are north of a hundred of CVPs alone. I can only imagine how many directors and sr. directors there are. 
To summon what is really wrong with MS, the whole company is a giant check box, no quality control. The overall belief is, it doesn't matter how crappy the product is, just put enough marketing $$ behind, and it is gonna sell. This mentality results in low quality work put into products and as the result low quality product.
The other major problem is MS functions like a religion. Believers are rewarded and the louder your praise is the higher you go. This is detrimental to MS since a**kissers are in charge and not smart and knowledgeable people.
Execs think they are listening to their customers and are building what they want. No you are not. Just telling yourself and your employees doesn't make it so.