STU Management walked straight out of BBC's "The thick of it" - Solution Sales Professional Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
19 Nov 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The building is modern and spacious. Restaurants are good & checked thoroughly.

Cons

2nd Grade managers. Lots of them are promoted individual contributors. Many years of service, slimy upwards, frustrated downwards. Playing manager, not being manager. Not interested in results, only in personal PR. Our weekly team meetings were exemplary for BBC's the thick of it. They usually start like: "I have met with X (team members should be impressed) and it's vital that we are visible here and here. Please produce this and this before end of business tomorrow." Team member: "But that entails a week of work with excell, I want to talk to my customers." Manager: "Prioritize this, it's important for our visibility in the organization" Team member: "All the asked information is in the crm already, and it is a problem that no one is talking to the customers in inside sales." Manager "Please stop making objections and do as your told before eob tomorrow I repleat. It that clear to everybody?". Goes on like this week after week, always about something else, but always about visibility and never about the business and performance. It is unbelievable how small a number of inside sales employees are actually talking to customers, and how toxic the management culture is. Managers are not standing for their workers, and they really don't care for the customer either. They are looking down on their workers and customers. The good people which perform, and care for the business, are considered dangerous. They are leaving as soon as they can, and they are even sacked. People who are among the top sales performers in emea are sacked because management doesn't like them.

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5.0
4 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

great to work with collaborative team

Cons

large company so there's a lot of overlap between team strengths

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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