Company: Microsoft
Date: 2019-01-15
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Good company with bad mid-level management
Pros: Great work life balance if you enjoy getting paid by probably the highest pay rate per working hour in the industry while working minimum amount

Work flexibility is good if you are one of the mid-level management's favorite children. Some of my coworkers have ridiculous amount of vacation or out of office days.

Good benefits, the company takes care of its employees.

Opportunities to explore and employees are encouraged to move around inside the company although you must go through an interview process or a "loop". Given the size of the company, you will find a role truly excites you.

Nice and smart people to work with and to learn from.
Cons: Just want to claim that below is only witnessed in my org and not sure will be applicable to the whole company. But I'm sure certain patterns are the same across the board.

Politics or clique is a big issue at the company. The CEO is trying to change the company culture. However, you will find strong resistance to the change from many long-time employees. Some people managers are so fake and pretend to care about you. Instead, they will manipulate and twist messages to guard their jobs and step on your head for promotion. Backstabbing is common to benefit one's own career development. 

Conversations are not inclusive, and communication is bad. When you are unfairly treated, there is no place for your voice to be heard or for you to be understood. If you try to explain, you will be regarded as too defensive and not willing to embrace the growth mindset. When there's misunderstandings, basically my manager told me to shut up in a polite way. I also have been shut down multiple times by senior employees when I tried to help them understand things on a project.

Mid-level management don't know how to create clarity. They will use big and vague words to sound smart, but they cannot explain themselves when you ask follow up questions for details or clarification.

Talents have been leaving the team constantly and no one from management has any interest to investigate. Instead, they think that they are nurturing talents for the company. Some senior employees who stayed don't even know how to use our own technology.