Microsoft

• Great place to work if you find the right manager. • Good pay. • Great benefits until Obamacare kicks in and hits the healthcare plan. • Broad set of work opportunities. • Good work/life balance if you find the right team and manager. • Large support for charity. • Internal Alpha/Beta testing for XBOX, Windows, Office, etc. (Geek Points). • Great place to expand the breadth of your technical knowledge.

A forced curve for review models causes great teams to give bad reviews to good employees. Someone could have 15 years of above-average reviews and get caught by the curve or a bad manager, and is then forced to leave the company because of the stigma and difficulty of working their way out of a bad review.

Many senior leaders are oblivious to the waste and bad decisions of the leaders below them.

Small, efficient teams are usually taken over by empire builders, who are the cause of most waste.

People are told they are the #1 resource of the company. However, most decisions made that affect the employment of individuals are done without discussion with the people involved.

Many decisions made by management are not data-driven.

Change the review process.

Find smart people who are proven to drive efficient delivery with high customer satisfaction and learn how they do it.

Reward teams that are made up of star employees. You can’t continue to clean house every year for a small team; the odds are that you will eventually have all good people (with the right management).

Keep the great medical benefits.