Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-09-30
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

New HR rating system makes it difficult to manage
Pros: - Still a market leader in many areas.  Strong investment in R&D shoudl allow that to continue.
- Great benefits.  Good salary, especially for lower level roles.  Lowest salaried role is over 70K plus bonus
- Many smart people
Cons: - Being a manager is disturbing.  New performance system forces some irrational decision.  I'm sure that Microsoft does need to fire 5% of its workforce, but it is simply making the company more bureaucratic.  Performance is less critical than political positioning.
- Current monopoly  profit margins will erode as disruptive technologies drive competition and Microsoft moves to lower margin Cloud products