14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is considered one of the best companies to work for in the entire world, but an ex-Microsoft manager says this isn’t entirely true.
A former exec who refused to provide his name for obvious reasons told us that working for Microsoft isn’t at all a dream come true, but rather a very exhausting challenge.
“As an ex-Microsoft Manager, I can tell you that it's not the most employee friendly environment on the planet. Believe it or not, MS is very high on customer satisfaction and investor relations, but the piece of the puzzle that could use some tuning is employee satisfaction,” he told us.
“For the five years I was there, I averaged over 70 hours per week and was expected to take my laptop on vacations and 'keep up' with the issues. The reason they could get away with this: So many talented people would kill to work for MS that they could simply afford to treat employees as disposable items,” he continued.
While we cannot guarantee that all these details are indeed accurate, working 70 hours per week is a thing several corporations are asking for.
Companies are offering employees laptops, tablets and smartphones to do their work on the go, while some of them are even allowed to work from home, in an attempt to keep workers always connected to their jobs.
The Redmond campus is indeed ranked as a great place to do your work, but a report that emerged last week revealed that things aren’t only milk and honey within the company.
Windows boss Steven Sinofsky had to leave the company because of what seemed to be a growing tension between him and the other executives, including CEO Steve Ballmer. That’s not to say that such a working environment can be found all over the campus, but it definitely has an impact on all employees.
Our source, however, claimed that Steve Ballmer may have changed one thing or two since he took over the CEO position, but Bill Gates was definitely expecting more from all his employees.
“In all fairness, this was back around the turn of the century when Gates was still running everything. Whether or not things have changed under Ballmer, I cannot say,” he concluded.