Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-01-28
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

big slow company
Pros: Many smart people who really want to do great work. Pockets of really exciting work on various teams. Stable job to just do some work.
Cons: Company has no real vision, mission or values. Antiquated processes and organizational hierarchy. The company moves slower than ALL competitors. We are too afraid of failure so we take no risks.  That's an unsustainable market position even if Office 365 prints money or Exchange is forced down the throats of all the Fortune 500 companies' employees.  Soon enough it will be leap frogged by the next wave small businesses using newer products and processes. There is very little genuine innovation. Too many broken promises Windows 8, Surface, Windows Phone, Zune, Xbox music, Bing, Nokia etc.  We enter markets without passion. It just seems like someone in management said, "Here's a place we might be able to make some money." Then we timidly go into the market and kill the project a few years later. The products lack fundamentals, passion and focus because leadership lacked a focus on the fundamentals and genuine passion for the customer's needs.  There is no real feedback loop between putting a product out and seeing if it's successful and iterating.  Usually we take so long to make something that a feedback look is years then people have moved on to other projects and a different team has to pick up the pieces and start over only to make the same mistakes. The worst part is that everyone knows the problems and we're all a bit ashamed of the mistakes and products we released that we weren't proud of.  Management isn't stupid. But somehow nothing ever changes.