Microsoft isn't helped by the fact that there are also FB and Google in town, and they pay at least 20% more and have better engineers to work with as well, whi

Microsoft isn't helped by the fact that there are also FB and Google in town, and they pay at least 20% more and have better engineers to work with as well, which makes work far less aggravating. So MS gets FB/Google rejects at this point, and there's a constant brain drain on top of that. But their internal culture has always been, "if we pay managers well enough things will work out". This breaks down when you actually have to do something hard (rather than rearrange buttons on Office app toolbars), as managers aren't the ones who do the actual work.