Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-05-20
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Microsoft make me grow
Pros: I did 4 teams at Microsoft (XBOX, Windows, Office, Surface), the pros are:
-Really nice and smart people.
-Benefits are awesome. Salary is great. Immigration services is "ok". Lot of vacations.
-A terrific work balance.
-A lot of humanity, it's hard to be lay off.
-You learn a lot.
-You have a huge impact (Windows or Office == millions of users)
Cons: -A lot of reorganization
-A lot of people doesn't have passion anymore
-Promotions opaque and too slow. Leads have too much responsibilities.
-No "one microsoft", all teams have their own culture, tools. They are all completely different.
-A lot of cancelled projects.

-A lot of people paid a lot but you dont understand what they are doing.
-They mostly do software like 15 years ago (rarely agile, no ownership E2E)
-Level are not same across team, a SDE I in Visual Studio compiler equals a senior in bing. Some seniors testers became SDE but dont know anything about coding.