Company: Microsoft
Date: 2019-08-31
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Middle management bullying and politics
Pros: - Flexible, working from home accepted and encouraged, however takes more effort to establish work relationships.
- Benefits are good when compared to non-IT companies.
Cons: - Many silos in the company with obscure roles. This is a place for people to hide their incompetence, particularly middle management.  

- Bullying is dismissed when escalated to senior leadership. HR function largely outsourced and impersonal. There are pages of instructions on what to do and how grievances are handled but no clear accountability. 

- Incredibly political and bureaucratic. It’s about who you know to get ahead, not your merits or performance. If your manager does not support you (or worse still, take credit for your work) you won’t get anywhere. 

- Feedback is ignored. 

- If you’re ambitious and want to make a difference or grow in your career, don’t come here. You’ll be frustrated and pushing constantly uphill. Whilst the growth mindset is preached, it’s not the reality. The culture doesn’t support it, the reporting lines don’t support it and least of all, management doesn’t support it. 

- Middle management spin their wheels to justify their existence - lots of micromanaging, doing things for the sake of it rather than what is efficient or effective.