Microsoft Case Microsoft Career Development Case Study

The case presented in the brief concerning Microsoft provides an overview both of Microsoft's hiring and managerial advancement processes and of the career development path of a specific employee named Matt MacLellan. MacLellan is identified as a standout young rising star in a corporation built almost exclusively of young rising stars. The brief provides a narrative which traces MacLellan's evolution as a managerial figure under the tutelage of Jim Kaplan and in the scope of a project designing an interactive computing device for young girls and young children in general. The project itself would provide a context within which MacLellan was expected to excel and simultaneously develop new leadership skills while being challenged.

The brief describes MacLellan's experiences and simultaneously demonstrates several of the HR principles in action at Microsoft. Most particularly, the imperative within to push the best and brightest technical specialists toward more active managerial and business leadership roles is exemplified by the path along which MacLellan is pressured.

Major Problem:

Without question, MacLellan excels both as a manager and as an innovator within his team. The project itself, under five years of development, is a successful endeavor and is due in no small...

However, MacLellan is personally not satisfied with the nature of the work he's doing. Though he gains some gratification for being able to witness the development of a product from germinal idea to market testing, MacLellan confides in Kaplan that he experiences the same discontent at the end of the five-year project as he did entering into the endeavor. Namely, MacLellan is working in a management role even as he has insisted both prior to the project and throughout that he would really much prefer a more direct and hands on role in project development.
Cause of the problem:

Internal Factors:

MacLellan has here presented Kaplan with a dilemma. Kaplan must pressure MacLellan to embrace this evolving managerial role in light of the internal factors around which Microsoft's corporate hierarchy revolves. Internally, though personnel experience short-term gratification, burnout is common. In MacLellan's case, it can be argued that this is as a direct result of attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole, as it were. MacLellan has expressly offered his services as a programmer and a product developer, but due to his ample talents, Microsoft has tagged him for managerial advancement. This helps to underscore one of the critical philosophical shortcomings to the Bill Gates' inspired approach of…