Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-06-07
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Your experience will depend on the team and manager
Pros: Jobs can be challenging and meaty with interesting work and good team members. The corporate support structure is top-notch as expected from a company of this size. Excellent benefits, beautiful offices and good computer equipment. Discount at Microsoft employee store.
Cons: Inconsistent employee and manager quality across the board. A lot of re-organizations. A stack ranked system of performance review that is infamous. Consistent bias toward women in terms of salary and promotion with a few token women in managerial positions (usually in marketing, PR and what is considered "soft" areas of tech). This is endemic in the tech field and Microsoft is no exception and they do not have any organized way to correct for this gender bias. No good managerial oversight or training so your experience will depend on the manager you get. There are a lot of cases of fickle and incompetent managers at Microsoft, not in the high-profile roles but in the less visible teams, it can be run as fiefdoms with a lot of playing favorites. A colleague called it having "pets". If you are on the right side of it, you'll be happy and on the wrong side, you'll be frustrated.