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Mixed - depends on the group

Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET)
Current Employee
Has worked at Microsoft for less than 1 year
December 31, 2010
3.0
RecommendsDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

I had one group that was pretty good with organization and process, so that folks didn't feel too overwhelmed and knew what their priorities should be. There was reasonable work-life balance as well. The work could be interesting, although with competition between leads, there was some cherry-picking of assignments away from those who were interested.

Cons

Another group was terrible. There was no coordination between the different teams, and too many "high priorities" at once. It was not clear whether the right things were happening.

There are so many teams in a company of 90,000+ people that it really doesn't matter whether I name it or not; your chances of arriving there are minuscule.

Advice to Management

Try for greater consistency between the teams. There's a push to have employees "manage their own careers," which is mostly a cop-out for managers to not do their jobs in making things clear, removing obstacles, properly resourcing requirements, etc.

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