Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-05-24
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Generally a good company, but watch out for toxic districts
Pros: Super well paying jobs with great benefits, better than most other companies out there. If you are social, well-liked among the upper management, and can play company politics well, you will be successful here. Best advice is not to advance too quickly, and be mediocre, and you will have a great home life as well. If you give too much and people start expecting too much of you, you will get taken and left out to dry.

Other than NY Metro, mid-level career progression is actually quite good, and you can build a name for yourself amongst the technical side of the business.
Cons: Being at Microsoft for almost ten years and around several regions and teams, New York Metro sales is probably the most toxic of all U.S. teams from which you should avoid. The bullying culture is still very much alive, and unless you can also be a jerk, you won't survive here.

In general, people lack passion for what they do, though they have passion for their own personal lives, which is covered up by the compensation. If you have Microsoft on your resume for too long, it might actually hurt you, because you're too bought into the ecosystem and less desirable for other companies, especially startups.

Good employees are often let go or allowed to walk away, while bad managers are protected by their managers and HR.