Microsoft reviews

The primary downside of Microsoft is that a lot of the old-school people from the early days of Microsoft are still hanging on at Microsoft and not moving on or retiring. This limits the ability for talented people with new ideas from taking on senior positions. One of the other downsides is that the jobs, whatever they are, aren't exciting in and of themselves-- as an employee, however, you can take many different steps to expand your possibilities, challenges, and abilities. Another downside of Microsoft is the review process; while heavily instrumented, the instrumentation is highly subjective and I've never met a manager (or employee) that fully understands it.

Microsoft is made up of so much bureaucracy and red tape that it's difficult to really feel like you make a difference until you're higher up the chain. There are so many layers of management and so many silos that it's very difficult to get anything beyond trivial tasks done in a decent length of time. This leads to huge investments of time and money that probably aren't truly necessary.