Microsoft Lead Program Manager reviews

The downsides of working at Microsoft are the nepotism, bureaucratic processes and procedures, and an overall lack of agility. We are not very fast to respond to market opportunities and have not done a good job of acquiring companies with new & innovative technologies. In my view, the Yahoo thing has been mostly mishandled.

Microsoft suffers from many problems of large companies. The original culture has been watered down by bureaucracy, rules, fiefdoms, feuds, and politics. The stack-rank compensation system creates the need for employees to create their own visibility resulting in people favoring appearances over output. There are also limited opportunities for rapid promotion as the slow product cycles, ranking systems and politics get in the way. In the subsidiaries, you work at a severe disadvantage to Redmond in terms of resources, working conditions, career paths, and general opportunities. Your pay, however, may be better in a subsidiary (although benefits are not kept on par with Redmond).