Microsoft

Technological immersion – constant new technology. Stack ranking is now gone.

HR's idiotic and stifling stack ranking (or curve fitting) of employees is now supposedly gone (as part of the "One Microsoft" reorganization). I fear the bureaucratic and myopic HR remains. It will take years for HR's poison to be cleaned out of Microsoft. Due to stack ranking, there are now thousands of technically shallow and dispassionate managers tucked away.

I must wonder whether HR employees were held responsible for their years of employee abuse (it appears not). Over the years, HR trained MS employees well: You were to climb on the backs of your fellow employees; you must avoid working with those who are "better"; you were to work according to the metrics your manager imposed (which were frequently idiotic ones, not much better than a "lines of code" metric); and you were to transfer anywhere else, as quickly as possible (so that you stay 'fresh', in your manager's eye).

Prior to the reorg, the head of Sales & Support required sales training upon all, required no support training, and completely misunderstood the purpose of support (he apparently thought support was supposed to make sales pitches). With Sales and Support now supposedly split up (per "One Microsoft"), perhaps such damaging behavior has been limited to just "one" of the many Microsoft divisions.

HR needs to be quartered. The money spent on glossy HR brochures and over-produced internal sales videos should be replaced with more morale events.

Contracting and outsourcing need to be quartered. Think more about employee & customer loyalty, and less about your stockholders' short-term bottom line.

Show and advertise to each country that you care about it by ensuring each country is only supported by its citizens. Recognize individual employees by offering individual bonuses – ones that are not tied to any of the many "One Microsoft" performance metrics. Remember what Mark Twain wrote about statistics/metrics.

Reduce the deepest levels of management by 50%. Foster more employee & customer feedback through fewer levels of management. Start listening more to the variety of your customers. Recognize your markets: What youths want is not going to align with what a CIO wants, and individually tailor solutions. Remember that Windows started personal (and then went corporate). Avoid the "one Microsoft size fits all Microsoft customers" gutter (e.g., Windows 8).

Acknowledge by actions when (individual and) team metrics are not perfect. For example, selectively override some of the lower bonuses when they are due to one year's poor "metrics".

Be far more terse in your emails. The higher up in Microsoft management one is, the longer the emails have been, but your employees become spammed (each manager is trying to outdo another in email length), jaded, or overwhelmed.