Company: Microsoft
Date: 2019-06-13
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Sophisticated workplace exclusion
Pros: Great benefits. CEO/Satya who cares about the work environment for his employees or at least is visible in vocalizing that. Human Resources less so - pretty standard, protect the status quo and current leaders mentality.
Cons: I worked in Redmond in Windows/E&D. As a highly educated and senior leader who is a woman of color, I felt repeatedly excluded by the white women in my organization, particularly those with historical/seniority status. They had very subtle exclusionary behaviors that can’t be “written up.” Examples include: talking about me behind my back, which I heard from another colleague; discounting/ignoring my contributions and ideas; greeting only each other in the office and not initiating social conversations with me; seeding doubt about my project outcomes and timelines by telling the executives that we weren’t going to hit our timeline and budget. Meanwhile, my white female counterparts gave themselves generous overages on completing their pieces both in time and budget. 

In my history of working for multiple companies and work environments, I have never felt so invisible, devalued and disrespected than at Microsoft.