Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-05-24
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Account Manager - Online Advertising
Pros: Big ship - not going bankrupt anytime soon.
Smart, cool, diverse people.
Flexible schedules and outstanding benefits.
Some cool products - like XBOX.
Very philanthropic - supports the charities you donate to.

The overall company has lots of opportunities - which is great. You could be an accountant in France, and set a goal of doing software sales in China, and Microsoft can help make that happen.
Cons: This review is specific to the online advertising account management (services) organization. 

Poor upper management with a dictatorship style.  Lots of ego.  People in leadership positions with poor people leader skills. Fear based motivation.
Spend more time managing your brand and your review score than you do managing the business and doing your job.
Reviews are based on a forced distribution, and people are stacked ranked, period. Meaning, everyone could perform really well, but the review curve will force 10% of employees to get a poor review, and likely the ax.
Antiquated and awful internal tools.  Heavy process and red tape.
Disjointed business groups with lack of accountability and follow through.
Heavy workloads.