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Great people and not too much bureaucracy

Software Development Engineer II
Former Employee
Worked at Microsoft for 1 year
July 27, 2014
Bellevue, Washington
4.0
RecommendsPositive OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

This is specifically for the Online Services Division and Bing Search in particular.

  • Very smart people.
  • Lots of projects to work on, so technically it's possible to transition to a team you think you can be more productive, though this is not very encouraged.
  • Very smart managers that don't micromanage.
  • Modern technologies (latest versions of C#, Visual Studio, and frameworks).
  • Huge scale that makes it possible to uncover some of the bugs in .NET/CLR itself.
  • Separate offices.
Cons
  • Working on a tiny part of a huge project doesn't help to feel ownership and limits the amount of learning.
  • Some decisions are driven by politics and from the top, which leaves engineers to pay for management games.
  • Source version control makes it very hard to have multiple local feature branches. This noticeably decreases productivity.
  • Perks are very average, especially when comparing to Silicon Valley companies. These include rare offsites to the cinema, coffee machines, and much appreciated foosball and pool tables.
Advice to Management

Consider using micro-service architecture. This will give engineers a sense of ownership and a bigger surface area. They would be less dependent on the errors of other teams and would be able to learn and innovate more.

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