Company: Microsoft
Date: 2017-01-17
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Come for the $ if you don't mind politics
Pros: - Great compensation package & benefits
- Smart people
- Hard problems
- Ability to work on products that are used by 1B people
Cons: 1) Culture. Everyone is giving praise to the "New Microsoft." Satya can say all he wants that he's turning the place around and invests in people - but it's not entirely true. You have the same VPs running teams there and they continue to perpetuate favoritism and sexism. There is no safety at Microsoft. You may be okay in a role for a while, until there is a re-org. A new VP comes in and replaces all the leadership with people they know. That job you were waiting around for? Gone. It's given to someone the VP trusts.

Culture is also about how we treat each other. Office politics happen when there is a lack of trust in the workplace. Teams are still competing with the each other for resources. Within teams, managers are playing games to protect their own feature areas and resources. With respect to compensation, it gets worse. While MSFT can say they got rid of the stack rank, it's the same budget for rewards. It's not possible to give everyone a max payout with the budget. This means the VP takes from everyone to give top rewards to a few key performers.

2) If you ever join MSFT, good luck finding your next job. Many recruiters will question your ability to get anything done. There is definitely prejudice against MSFT employees in the valley.