Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-11-30
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Excellent colleagues and supportive management
Pros: I worked with creative, intelligent, passionate people. The environment was supportive, giving me all the resources I needed. Everyone was generous with their time and knowledge.
Cons: The company's products are driven by the marketing departments. If marketing thinks the customers want something, then resources are dedicated to it. If marketing doesn't think customers are clamoring for something, it is actively resisted, because you get no rewards for creating features that marketing doesn't want. This means that innovation and creativity are inherently locked out of product development, because by their nature new ideas aren't yet being asked for by customers. It's foolish and short-sighted by utterly entrenched and every kind of compensation reinforces this policy.