I decided to leave Microsoft to come back to my first activity: be part of a startup; in 1990, I founded a first software startup which is sleeping since years...
Leaving a company like MS is not an easy step considering be part of this company was a dream;
Microsoft is really a great company but it seems that's remains true pretty only in Redmond and not in MCS (MS service);be part of the Microsoft Service as consultant means be part of the worst division of the company; (the real stars, bonus, etc... are for software divisions or sales)the guy leading the service divisions come from Wal-Mart and he's truly considering people like food boxes; he is not the only one;all news managers in this company (at least in my region) aren't coming from the original MS culture which was really loving technologies and the brand;those guys can sales cars, software or services with same method with ONE only goal: make money; only money....I know money is important but at a certain point, the performance improvements requested each year are so crazy I recently didn’t met an happy consultant in this company (again in my region). Processes, surveys, paper work, reviews and career management cause balance life work really bad; training budget has been reduced so badly that'scause a loss in quality of skills for pretty all consultant; in same time, technologies become more and more complex....
Anyway, from now on, I will using cool techno like WPF, WCF, WF, and SQL2005 in my new startup project...
Best regards
-Vince