Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-02-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Microsoft after the Golden Age
Pros: Microsoft had the best healthcare benefits while I was there from 1999 through 2010. I have a family of three young kids and a wife with a serious medical condition. While at Microsoft, I never had to pay a penny out of pocket for any prescription, doctor visit, hospital stay or medical procedure.
Cons: Everything was very decentralized, with each group and/or team "doing it's own thing." No one really knew what anyone else was doing.This may have worked when the company was smaller to promote competition of ideas, but when it matured this lead to people building fiefdoms and causing confusion with the customers. Also when there was corporate control, it was one size fits all approach. What worked for software development doesn't always work for the marketing or sales side of things. Also the culture of Type A personalities, the loudest in the room is always right mentality, is a very destructive way to manage processes and teams and this culture ran deep while I was there.