Company: Microsoft
Date: 2017-09-18
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

A positive place to work, regardless of minor criticisms below.
Pros: Reputable and profitable company, with obvious name recognition.  Most employees try hard to do their jobs well.  Large emphasis placed on work/life balance.  Huge variety of roles to choose from, with opportunities for role change.  Pay ranges much better than they had been in the early 2000s.  Leader in Cloud space.
Cons: See themselves as a SJW at the CEO / HR level, to the point of excess in some cases.  Manage by 'Scorecard', which dictates a million little things that all need to be perfect to be considered successful, including down to the employee level. Over-emphasis on meaningless training (everyone knows it's just a 'check the box' exercise, with little gained from it other than being a distraction from the Scorecard objectives).  Can be inflexible at the exec management level,  expecting  Kool-Aid to be consumed even when it's obviously bad Kool-Aid (think 'MUST use Windows Phone').