SSP" The Spread Sheet Specialist - SSP Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
18 Nov 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Nice building Depending on alignment, obtaining bonuses can be extremely easy

Cons

You would think working for one of the largest software developers in the world would be a blessing. I expected an agile, feedback based, open work environment and like minded culture. Boy was I wrong. Unfortunately Microsoft Dublin is influenced by an archaic management system. Micromanagement has clearly been invented in this office. Senior managers taking pictures of people's work space when they're not sitting behind their desk. Endless spreadsheets to fill in (who needs MSX right?). A dozen internal meetings a week, and therefor no time for actual customer contact. 'Initiatives' that create visibility amongst other teams are rewarded by management. Think of colourful spreadsheets, mail merges, mass importing MSX data, and so on.. Often these endeavours only take up valuable time, create more overhead and generally demotivate people. As Management is only interested in short term wins (Quarterly at best), calling customers is not rewarded because that implies long term relations, planning, complex engagements, etc. Instead, maintaining an inflated bubble-like pipeline full of nonsense is what is required to survive here. This has to be presented (and kept up-to-date daily) in MSX, Excel and Powerpoint all at the same time. There is no actual verification of work done and I can promise you that our pipeline is 95% FAKE and has been since I joined. Priorities seem to shift on a weekly basis, largely depending the quality of sleep our leadership had the night before. Or maybe its the direction of the wind, who knows. Most capable people have left or are in the process of leaving. What remains is a cyclical self serving corrupt workforce that has no intention of doing their best for Microsoft.

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5.0
5 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Learned a lot, plenty of team work opportunities

Cons

Internship could have been longer than 4 weeks

4.0
28 Jan 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1. If you love tech, this is a great place. No doubt you'll talk tech (mostly the MSFT stack) from enterprise to consumer - from PCs to phones to Xboxes - from datacenter to desktop. 2. What were GREAT benefits are now VERY GOOD (took a small step down) but still probably better than you'll find at 99% of large corporations. If you've got family - the value of the benefits is even higher. 401k match is nice. 3. Even with it's struggles MSFT is still a cash printing machine. This means if you can keep your nose clean and do reasonable work, you can have a stable job, pay your bills, feed your family, and not worry (too much) about layoffs. The stock you own likely won't tank, but probably won't go up much either. You'll get a bonus each year and some stock. It's a decent life if you aren't looking to light the world on fire.

Cons

Brand on Your Resume: After many years of losing market share and struggling to be at the front end of innovation and the fact that there's 90,000 employees, don't think MSFT is necessarily going to be attractive on your resume to more agile and smaller companies. Managing Your Career: Make you say this out loud so it registers - 90,000 employees work there. Double that for vendors. It is VERY hard to "stand out" and move up in the company. Don't expect your manager to be much of an advocate or enabler to help you meet your career goals - they are basically trying to survive the stack rank every year too. Not familiar with the stack rank? Check out the 2012 Vanity Fair article called "Microsoft's Lost Decade".

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