Company: Microsoft
Date: 2020-01-29
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

3.5 Stars if I could
Pros: Work-life balance is typically what you make it.  They (both Corp and stakeholders) will take as much of your time as you are willing to give, so know your boundaries and set them early.

The pay is good relative to competitors.  The benefits are excellent.  You work with intelligent, collaborative people (mostly).  You might be able to move on to a different role within the org or with another group like Engineering.

The new GM of CMR as of Fall 2019 seems genuinely interested in improving culture and providing development opportunities, which is promising.

No commute into downtown Seattle. :)
Cons: Middle management is a mixed bag.  I've heard some managers are great and others are definitely not so great.  Management with long tenure is a double-edged sword as institutional knowledge is valuable but it allows bad habits or practices to become more deeply ingrained. There doesn't seem to be any training for managers on how to actually manage high performing teams which definitely causes attrition. 

While official stack-ranking is no longer a thing, promotions are still largely dependent on favoritism (or fear of losing strong talent) rather than basic merit, as managers do not adhere to the promotion or level guidelines published by HR.  At each people review more employees are put up for promotion than can realistically be promoted due to budget.  

Not specific to CMR, but across Microsoft, there aren't any mechanisms for providing feedback on your skip manager.  Internal surveys ask about immediate manager and group manager, but that doesn't capture the entirety of the employee experience.