Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-05-22
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Signs for Optimism, but Numerous Problems Still Exist
Pros: -While the amenities can't match Google or Facebook, overall the pay and benefits are superb like most tech companies.
-Despite the fall in reputation, it's still a major tech company who works on big things with big impact and whose name still carries a lot of power. It also still has a lot of very smart people.
-Under the right set of conditions, you can enjoy a really prosperous career here.
-From an external perspective, they have good corporate ethics. It may not be relevant to the day-to-day work of employees as much, but it still deserves to be called out as a major pro.
-They are starting to have some of the right ideas at the top, which was not always true in the past.
-It will take several years to see how Satya Nadella performs as CEO, but the initial impression has been a positive one.
Cons: -With a lot of major initiatives, you often have two groups: the talkers, who receive most of the hard power, set "best practices," and get support and recognition from management, and the doers, who often best execute on the vision despite a lack of support from both management and the talkers.
-Your performance rating is too dependent on the quality of your manager.
-Perception, not reality, dictates decision-making too much. Groupthink can also be a problem at times, which can seem collaborative but is actually detrimental to the culture, especially for unique individuals.
-The stack ranking may be gone, but the new system has little transparency into how performance ratings are done. A lot of people have not noticed because they are THAT glad to see the stack ranking go.
-Too many people leave the company, either voluntarily or involuntarily, on bad terms.
-Under the right set of conditions, employees can experience stress at levels which are physically unhealthy.