Company: Microsoft
Date: 2011-02-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Great benefits but uninspiring work and really confused management.
Pros: Excellent Benefits - Healthcare support is excellent, I have gotten so many expensive procedures and tests done from the best doctors and not had to pay a single penny.  Also great for families for this very reason **Although most benefits will erode by 2013

Broad portfolio of products - If you get bored of working on office products, you can work on xbox or search (bing) or developer tools (visual studio). Microsoft makes everything!

Good support staff and facilities - Shuttle bus services, prime card discounts etc. etc.

Good Innovative work in VERY SELECT groups. Just pray you get into one of them and never get re-orged out.
Cons: - Re-orgs - I have been in this company or almost 3 years and switched teams twice and barely got to write any code, why? Because the group cannot decide its org structure so it keeps re-orging and the developers as a result never get to really *work* on stuff. I've noticed this in two different organizations (servers & tools and Bing). Re-orgs are KILLING employee morale, wasting company money and serving no real purpose.

- Too much bureacracy - I have to jump through hoops to switch to a different job within the same company. Ordering a freakin' Book is a nightmare.

- Bubble effect - Most people are heavily soaked in the company kool-aid and don't realize that Microsoft products are slowly getting irrelevant in the market. Some people don't even have a clue about what the competitive products are out there. People will have intellectually dishonest debates with you just to satiate their over inflated ego rather than understand what a hole the company is in.

- Very low on CREATIVITY, very little ORIGINALITY. Everyone likes to do things in an certain way - its like a government job.

- Lot of politics at Principal and General Manager Level. Sometimes who speaks the loudest gets ahead - although its a truism in most places but its sad to see this happen in a technical, facts driven company.

- There is SOME exciting work happening, but you need to be in the right place and pray to got that you don't get re-orged out.