Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-08-02
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Good first job, bad career
Pros: There are truly brilliant people at Microsoft, and lots of passion in the air.
Cons: Review system politics -- you survived the 99% cut off rate of interviews and racked up lots of experience, shipped some products, patented ideas, added innovative features, saved the day, etc, but now you're in a rough patch at work, and find yourself in the bottom 10-20% of the review pool due to "metrics" and personality issues, and you are headed to eviction. Perhaps you'd like the opportunity to interview with another team? You'd better interview with Google or Apple, because your internal record won't allow you to stay at Microsoft. And once you get one bad review, you bet you won't pull yourself out of the hole.