Company: Microsoft
Date: 2011-02-15
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Great people, mediocre/bad management
Pros: - High bar for hiring, so quality of engineering I worked with was excellent
- Good benefits, especially health and generous matching for charitable giving/volunteer time. If you have a family, can't do much better than this anywhere
- Moving internally is easy, so it's possible to work on varied products, ( from the OS to databases to online services to phones) which can be exciting for an engineer
Cons: - Review model is good in theory, but broken in practice. Too much politicking may lead to surprises at review time. 
- Mediocre middle management. Good engineers do not necessarily make good managers, and there is little coaching/mentoring in a lot of teams. 
- The salary is good for the Pacific NW, but rewards for performance are mediocre at best. Being a star performer is not worthwhile as the extra reward in cash/stock isn't that much more than what an average performer makes. While the management claims that the top 20% get good rewards, you really have to be in the top 5% for the extra effort to pay off
- The company has too many me-too products and misses the boat too often on new ideas. Frustrating as an employee and shareholder to see this.