Company: Microsoft
Date: 2018-11-18
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

SSP" The Spread Sheet Specialist
Pros: Nice building
Depending on alignment, obtaining bonuses can be extremely easy
Cons: You would think working for one of the largest software developers in the world would be a blessing. I expected an agile, feedback based, open work environment and like minded  culture. Boy was I wrong. 

Unfortunately Microsoft Dublin is influenced by an archaic management system. Micromanagement has clearly been invented  in this office. Senior managers taking pictures of people's work space when they're not sitting behind their desk. Endless spreadsheets to fill in (who needs MSX right?). A dozen internal meetings a week, and therefor no time for actual customer contact. 

'Initiatives' that create visibility amongst other teams are rewarded by management. Think of colourful spreadsheets, mail merges, mass importing MSX data, and so on.. Often these endeavours only take up valuable time, create more overhead and generally demotivate people.  

As Management is only interested in short term wins (Quarterly at best), calling customers is not rewarded because that implies long term relations, planning, complex engagements, etc. Instead, maintaining an inflated bubble-like pipeline full of nonsense is what is required to survive here. This has to be presented (and kept up-to-date daily) in MSX, Excel and Powerpoint all at the same time. There is no actual verification of work done and I can promise you that our pipeline is 95% FAKE and has been since I joined. 

Priorities seem to shift on a weekly basis, largely depending the quality of sleep our leadership had the night before. Or maybe its the direction of the wind, who knows. 

Most capable people have left or are in the process of leaving. What remains is a cyclical self serving corrupt workforce that has no intention of doing their best for Microsoft.