Microsoft Employee Reviews for Embedded Systems Engineer

"I worked at Microsoft since 1997. Absolutely wonderful salary and benefits. The quality of the experience in teams that I worked in varied, some wonderful, some poor. To get a job here, do some research regarding the technology of the position, and practice whiteboard coding of classic simple coding algorithms. A general trend I observed is that those at higher management levels seem to not be sincerely focused on serving the needs of the customer, fully understanding the customer, and failing to drive technical innovation. The usual large company political/social agendas seem to take priority, despite constant discussion about serving the customer and driving innovation. Upper management is not finely honed technically. Efforts to make change at the Individual Contributor (non-management) level tend to fail. This lack of innovation is ultimately reflected by the current revenue status of Microsoft in relation to Google, Apple and others. How to improve the situation? The problem is endemic to management itself, so corrective action needs to occur starting at the very top of the chain. Perhaps in part by injecting highly technically competent leaders into the management chain, found externally, and then empowering them with the authority to implement corrections."