MicroStrategy Software Developer reviews

- Compensation: Below market in terms of base salary. Lags market by 2-3 years. No stock options either. Absolutely no incentive in terms of paycheck to keep you motivated to work harder. Compensation varies across teams even for similar position. - Benefits: An on-site gym and some useless spring music jams is all that is offered. Rarely any team events. - HR staff: It's the epitome of passiveness. Apparently, they feel that hiring is the only task they should do. So once you are in you wont see any worthy to mention initiatives taken up by them. - Promotions: Tenure based. Won't matter whether you work hard or just pretend you are working. Annual raises are not dependent on your performance. You just get what someone higher up decided for you. That seals your fate! - Too many directors and managers. Some don't even have direct reports. God knows what they manage. Probably they are just hanging around and waiting for retirement. These managers don't even have proper management training. - Haphazard restructuring. Either all good leaders are leaving every few months or they are forced to leave. Talented engineers rarely stay around for long! - The ones who have good contacts higher up the chain will get promoted out of cycle and sometimes multiple times a year. While the rest wait for annual cycle that brings only disappointment and more frustration. - management makes useless spending like putting ipads on doors, giving out multiple mobile devices to senior leaders (yes each one carries an ipad, mini-ipad, android, iphone)

There are several things to consider (from a software engineering role): - Compensation: it is simply below industry standard. Base salary is low, and bonuses are generally low as well - then add you almost never get 100% out of your bonus potential. In average, software engineering positions somewhere else will get you at least 10-15% more. - Benefits: other than a gym on-site and 10% cellphone plan discount, perks are not very good. If you manage to stay in the company for 6 years, you get 5 weeks paid vacation, but that's not the norm for MicroStrategy employees. - Lack of motivation: it's hard to find a guy that can sell you the job or the MicroStrategy vision. Top management specially is simply not a role model or someone to admire. Too much disorder, trying to do so many things at the same time without a clear, well-thought road-map. If you're unlucky enough to land in a "maintenance-mode" team, you will be pretty much fixing bugs and implementing small features on old products, while fighting non-sense requests from recent-grads working as PMs or non-technical analysts. - No standards. No clear processes: Different teams work as they please. Some of them have no build process in place. Some use a version control system, some others. Some have a lacking QA function. No clear communication channels. No ownership. - No employee recognition: it's hard to feel you're a valued person in the company. Other than a "employee of the quarter" recognition that is largely dependent on having a manager that wants you to be recognized (the minority of managers), you won't get anything. Not that recognition is the whole, but it certainly helps. - No clear career path: most of people here get promoted based on tenure rather than on performance. That leads to "senior" and "management" roles that shouldn't be. If people doesn't have the skills, then just don't promote them. You're going to damage the company when you put someone in charge of growing a team that does not know how to be a manager, or a leader. Believe me, I'd rather get a better salary increase than being a manager of my own time (i.e. managers with no direct reports). This of course is no secret. Talent leaves the company as soon as their immigration case is resolved (if applicable) or as a better offer somewhere else comes.