Microsoft

Microsoft has a deep bench of talented people with raw smarts, dedication, and passion.

Employees tend to have long tenures, even though they change groups within the company. This makes for a work environment where there is a lot to learn from the senior team members.

This is a terrific company to get mentorship, career guidance, and improve technical chops.

Microsoft's wide array of low-level systems products (Windows, .Net Framework, SQL Server) means that there is deep technical expertise in core computing fundamentals like operating systems, databases, languages, and runtimes.

The layer of middle management (dev leads, test leads) is bloated and adds little value. The specialization of roles into Dev, Test, PM limits employees from gaining transferable skills, as specialized roles outside of Microsoft are uncommon. Microsoft needs to figure out how to utilize the SDE/T (testing) discipline effectively to infuse reliability, stability, and performance into products. We need testers who are skilled enough to be developers on the same product. Microsoft also needs to determine its strategy in the services space. We also need to find ways to encourage small but good ideas to blossom into compelling products. It seems like products only get created when a General Manager or a VP decides to create something.

Please, please fire the marketing folks who do advertising and hire some competent ones instead. What's up with those pathetic Zune ads (viewers did not even understand that they were for a music device!)? What's up with those pathetic "Dinosaur" ads for MS Office?

Product development teams take great pains in delivering high-quality products; please hire decent people to market those.

Do something to stop having competitive offerings of the same technology within MS. It just causes politics that wastes time and effort. Instead, we could be focusing on beating the competition.

Oh, and please do something about this stock price!