Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-03-22
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

The Microsoft Stack Ranking
Pros: Used to be a big company, so some people may still think it as a good enough IT company. Or belongs to the first tier. Not the top pay company, but is good.
Cons: 1. The Windows technology is not used by the world. And it's going downward, so your experience at Microsoft will no longer help you when you find new jobs outside. Because everybody else are using something different.
2. The Benefit is going down. The medicals increased deductible, like 3K for two people family. 3.75K for family with 1 kid.
3. bureaucracy and politics. Now revolution is going on, like agile(ship monthly), flatten structural, merged engineering. But the many level of leads and managers are not going away. After a while, they fall back to their previous role. The lead now doesn't own head count, but they are doing exactly the same thing as before. That's pushing others.
4. The famous Stack ranking system. It is being revolutionized, but it's still there. And now Microsoft have a lot of crazy policies like: if you didn't get good review last year, you can't move within Microsoft, you have to leave for other company. If you leave Microsoft as FTE, you can't work for it until 6 months later even as vendor. My friend was just forced out of MS, now they don't fire you, they ask you to voluntarily resign from MS, with very small amount of money no matter how many years you have served here.
MS is becoming more and more mean, and less sympathy here.