Company: Microsoft
Date: 2010-09-11
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Too much pressure and work load for too little compensation and lip service to work life balance. Can't wait to leave.
Pros: Some incredibly smart people to learn from, good benefits, pleasant surroundings.
Cons: Very much a fear-based company.

Has entered the inevitable downward spiral of once successful companies and doesn't seem to know how to stem the tide let alone reverse it.  Employees are picking up on this more and more.

Like most of corporate America, MS has made employment almost all about "what have you done for me lately?" - you're only as good as your last accomplishment and can't bank accomplismentrs beyond your manager's whim. Co. emphasis on work life balance is, in practice, a joke - they'll work you to death and call it a normal part of the job. 

Co. is ovverly reliant on the whole "you need to manage your own career" mantra.  Sure -we need to do some of it but you need to help more because after all, aren't we there to work and not constantly be looking over the fence at the next oppty - which impacts our current job?

AWFUL review process others have already explained.   It's the elephant in the room - everyone knows about it, complains privately and loses sleep about it but is  discouraged from challenging it.  No matter how HR tries to spin it everyone knows it's a biased, broken system in place to favor the few.

Far too many GMs with many who are clueless as to what goes on in their orgs (beyond too many presentations from their directs) and openly play favorites. 

For all their talk about management skills MS has an incredible abiliity to hire and promote managers with poor or no people management skills.  Since this is a soft skill MS places too little value on it - but boy, do they miss the mark here- it has everything to do with the all important bottom line. Again, lip service by upper management on how vital it is but in the trenches it's shocking how far people can climb without knowing how to manage people-  to communicate with their workers..

Notoriously bad at not seeing the big picture when it comes to internal ops or long term impacts to customer sets - would rather throw something on the wall (read spend $) to see if it sticks then to step back and study the situation before acting.  If MS were a small company without such deep pockets they would have bankrupted themselves years ago doing this.  Shockingly little sense of ROI.

Politics, cliques, favoritism all rampant and slow the company's output, productivity and employee sat more than management cares to admit

Far too much lip service to wanting to change and improve and no consistent will to do it.

Since MS has made working there an almost strictly business proposition that's what I've done in self-defense. I'm my own business (I may work for MS but handle my career strictly in how it benefits me and not the co.) and  like so many before me I'm looking to leave (despite the econonomy).  Of course I keep my quiet about this (like not announcing a product release too early)  and can't wait to hang my shingle elsewhere.