Microsoft

Lots of smart people. Lots of cool and different projects to work on. Treats employees well. Good benefits. Very professional. Lots of resources.

Too big. Resources not always used efficiently. Not enough information sharing between different groups. You're a small voice.

The culture seems to be self-constraining itself in what it can do. There's too much pushback from people in saying what can and cannot be done.

It seems like startups and many large competitors (aapl, goog) don't limit themselves in building off of previous products and are more willing to not only think outside of the box, but execute on it too. There may be some good and cool stuff going on in MSR, but I'd be willing to bet you've got PMs and devs saying, "No, we can't do that," or "That'll take six years and three iterations to get right." Whereas other companies will just go do it, and often times they'll get something pretty cool going and out the door.

Not everything needs to be production and enterprise-ready before previewing to market.

Also, the software development cycle is too slow and resistant to change. Embrace some more agile and iterative methods of development. Assume a large percentage of your customers will have auto-update up and working. Make auto-update work better and more friendly (again, don't let those people who say "it can't be done" win. I'm sure WUS / MU can be made better, faster, and more user-friendly).

Focus more on efficiency, everywhere. In internal communication, product efficiency, employee productivity, etc.

Fixing this does not mean to launch a campaign, make a website, provide some tools and training. I mean, really get in there and figure out what the bottlenecks are, figure out how to improve things, have a discussion with the employees about their pain points and how to improve upon them.

Don't take a random sampling; allow everyone to speak and have a voice. Take feedback in the method of a poll / forum. Don't have someone who doesn't know what they're doing come up with a biased poll with biased questions that yield useless results (this happens way too often).

I've plenty more to say, but I'm tired of typing.

One last thing. For the senior senior management, I think Microsoft needs to find a place for the management that is no longer cutting it. Those that are too behind on current developments / trends in technology or otherwise out of touch with the needs of the customers / employees / company / industry. They are not helping anyone.

One other last thing. Get better visionaries and empower them. I know things are reviewed and discussed to death, but then I still see Microsoft coming out with things that make me wonder how anyone thought they would succeed. Allow them to come out with things that are "cool" again. Look to aapl for inspiration if you need to. Especially with the iPhone (at least in terms of its appeal / slickness).

I was proud to work at Microsoft, and still am proud to have worked there, but am becoming increasingly less so.

Stop listening to those people that push back and say it can't be done.

And please rebrand Windows Live (yes, again).

Ok, now I'm done for real. Thanks for reading.