Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-09-21
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

If you are great at sucking up and don't care about results, this is the place for you
Pros: Good compensation (although not worth the pain), medical coverage is good (although VERY high deductible / out of pocket max), gym membership, facilities.
Cons: The culture is the pits!    While I get good review scores the stack rankings make little sense.    High performing work horses are "rewarded" with more work, while lack luster performers who suck up to management can get the same review scores and compensations and deliver nothing.     The rating system is entirely driven by the buddy system, with no regard to merit, results, or how a person interacts with peers or customers.  

They a a handful of great executives like the former CMO, but even he was bumped from the CMO position by the former Windows Marketing & Finance VP (now CMO) in the July 2013 re-org.  The former CMO had a large part of his group taken away.      With the hideous Windows 8 marketing, and disastrous sales even with an enormous marketing budget, this is an excellent example of results not being a factor in who gets ahead.

Microsoft is also very afraid of any employee discrimination litigation.   There are several non-performing employees that have been around for years because Microsoft is afraid of a lawsuit if they are let go.  If you threaten a lawsuit and get a lawyer involved you can hang around collecting a paycheck for years without doing anything.