Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-06-13
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Software Engineer Track
Pros: Disclaimer: I realize the experience in Microsoft could be very division/team dependent, specifically I'm writing mostly for Azure and Bing.

1) Microsoft still does great tech., whole company emphasize on tech. and engineering first for the most the time (remember what Ballmer used to say at Microsoft conference). So you can end up with a resume doing cutting edge techs., but how much the industry cares about that when you walk out is dependent.

2) Microsoft is a great place to educate junior people, imo better than most of the "on your own" companies. Your career binds to a tech lead as junior people if he's technically strong (what supposed to be for most of time), you can improve a lot on how to do engineering. As a junior after 2-3 years in Microsoft with a right team you can be technically stronger than Google or Facebook made due to reasons above.

3) Company generally be nice for employees, they don't have good benefits like Facebook does but they do have comparable perks not including free food. For example they have legal insurance and ESPP which I found missing in Google or Facebook. Also they have free drink on quality/variance more or less the same about Google. Also I found their legal team (mostly for international employees) much more supportive/professional in general.

4) Some recent move make me think they are about to find some ways. But in general the moving slow pattern I mentioned below may prevent it from making them happen.
Cons: 1) Microsoft is not a giant leader as it used to be, so be prepared for hardworking and high pressure (I'm talking about workload more than Google or Facebook).

2) Some times you need to deal with senior/intangible person owning some domains that not easy to deal with, and this also brings some politics issue. Mostly you won't find much in newer companies like Facebook (this also due to Facebook's unique culture I can't tell much). But yah you can still find some in other large companies in Google. But in general Microsoft has more of this kind of things.

3) Company has some issues preventing it from making stuffs fast. If you guys notice how Google struggles to move towards Mobile and still not succeed, Microsoft is just worse than this from this perspective.