Inside Your Workplace
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Working at Microsoft
[ For Microsoft Corporation ] Posted February 12th, 2008 by newkid inWork Culture:Microsoft gives software developers a lot of personal freedom over both the work and the work environment. You can customize your office as you see, schedule your own trips and meetings, and select your own training courses. You can even work remotely from home (within reason). For the most part, you can determine what you work on and when you will get it done. There are exceptions — tasks others ask you to do for them, external deadlines or dependencies — but these goals are set cooperatively with the management and coworkers, taking into account your interests and abilities.Salary Benefits:Microsoft's compensation and benefits package are still above average for the industry, and well above average for the typical American worker. On the other hand, many benefits have eroded or disappeared during the past five years. It's public knowledge that raises and annual bonuses have diminished, option grants have been replaced with stock awards, employee stock purchase plan benefits have decreased, and cafeteria and company store prices have increased. For new employees, vacation time has been cut from three weeks to two, and new parents have to take their parental leave within 6 months instead of 12. It's not a positive trend.Manager:There are lot of issues with Mid Level Management. Most of the dev leads were developers first. Part of the problem is also that (unlike some companies that promote incompetence) good leads are usually promoted into higher positions quickly, so the companies best managers rise to the top. Consequently, the lower ranks are filled with managers who either have no interest in advancing up the management chain (which is fine) or else are below-average in their management skills.