Company: Microsoft
Date: 2009-04-28
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Microsoft - Feedback from Middle management to Execs
Pros: Unparalleled opportunity in terms of job profiles, product areas, markets and roles. Ability to chart your development path within Microsoft. Working with smart, best in class colleagues. Microsoft provides transition opportunity from your role to a completely different profile and provides resources and help from your management in chartering the path to your desired role. Generally, the top leadership is very open to direct inputs from a couple of layers below, so clearly there is a desire to get closer to the business at the top.
Cons: Bureaucratic organization, lags the market in innovation. Difficult to change systems and processes. Top heavy. Big org politics. Low collaboration - very individual optimized organization.

Middle management is the clay layer - lot of decisions are made without full awareness about the ground reality. There is too much of "yes sir/madam" behavior in the middle management leading to sub optimal decisions. Also, too many layers separate decision making layer from the execution layer.