Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-04-27
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Awesome place to start a career, gets more competitive after 5+ years
Pros: Microsoft is an excellent place to start a career in high tech. They are on the cutting edge of technology and you will always have access to the latest and greatest while performing your job. The benefits are really good (used to be great, now just really good). Seattle is a beautiful place to live and work. If you are a top performer, you are rewarded well.
Cons: As someone that has been rated a "1" and a "2', I still find the rating system to be incredibly counterproductive. A core value they try to promote is "making others great", however this is directly in conflict with how we are evaluated, it's all about your own performance. The first several years the review system really didn't bother me, but now that I'm in the largest level band, it's gotten so bad to the point where I want to leave the company. Again, this is coming from someone that has top ratings. The problem is, once you hit the top it becomes ridiculously competitive to stay there, so I end up spending 75% of my time worrying about how I will be perceived, is my work visible to management, am I working on the most critical projects, etc. I am not exaggerating when I say helping your teammates literally takes money out of your own pocket. I love the people that I work with, but at the end of the day I have a family to support as well. It is really ashame because Microsoft could be so much better if it revamped this system.