Microsoft

Nothing good seemed to ever happen at Microsoft IT. Since IT is considered a service division that supports the profit-making business units, most buildings are not even on the main corporate campus.

The pros are that you get easier parking. Not a big deal.

I worked at Microsoft IT for 5 years. It started well with a good manager and ended with two bad managers. Just like other positions at Microsoft, managers matter a lot.

I talked to other engineers at product groups like Windows and Office. Their culture seemed to be more engineering and technical focused than playing games and politics.

There is politics at every workplace. Microsoft IT seemed to get it the most. My review was heavily affected by if other engineers liked my personality rather than liked my engineering contribution. Who decided that? The ranking system dictated by the managers.

I've seen quite a bit of condemning, yelling, and pointing fingers between engineers and between managers. I estimated that 20% of managers have the management quality that average product group Microsoft engineering managers have. The sad thing is that such a culture has not changed. I recently went to an interview for MPSIT, CSS. The 1st and 2nd managers seemed to be okay, except the 2nd manager gave a question and lied about the correct answer. He said 1.5 / 0 in .NET yields some positive number; the correct answer is Infinity. No big deal. His attitude wasn't too bad, but that shows the weak technical skills in managers. In the 3rd interview, the manager wanted me to implement some kind of cache mechanism, but we started to have different ideas. It turned into arguments and debates; he failed to understand my implementation. When I explained it the 2nd time in plain English, he said he understood, but he lied. Bad communicator with an Indian accent. He was mad the whole time and kicked me out of the interview. If Microsoft IT wants to step up the game, they really need to get rid of those worthless managers.