Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-05-20
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Every group at this company is different
Pros: There are lots of opportunities to move around and switch roles if you find yourself stuck or don't like what you're working on.  Every team has a different culture and different way of doing things.  There is no one "Microsoft" way of doing things.
Cons: The benefits package has changed and the healthcare benefit is a pain now.  Now we have to deal with co-pays and lots of confusing bills and paperwork at the doctors office.  With the old plan, you just walked in, gave them your card and you were done.  Now it's just  a pain to deal with plus a lot of out of pocket money if you need surgery or anything expensive.

The whole rating system of forcing 7% of the employees to get the lowest score is ridiculous.  If they tried to force kids in public schools to adhere to this where 7% of them would always be failing just because their peers were doing better, this would be unacceptable.  The system feels forced and not truly based on performance.  Trying to fit to the perfect curve means a lot of people get scores they don't deserve.  (On both ends I might add.)

The other thing that bothers me greatly about Microsoft is the low number of female engineers and a very low number of females in leadership positions.  It's still very much a "boys club" here.