Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-06-01
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current

Amazing Work-Life Balance and Inspiring Technology Innovation
Pros: + Rapidly changing brand perception, significantly greater inbound client interest and compelling stories and products to present to customers
+ Leadership cleanup is going well and only a few staunch holdouts of the "Old Microsoft" remain, Satya is a visionary and has the company firing on almost all cylinders again
+ Amazing work-life balance - can't reiterate this one enough, everyone has family and you spend time with them, vacation is encouraged, balance is valued
+ Intense and interesting period of innovation for the company - visionary new products are being released with greater frequency than in the company's history
+ Excellent benefits like free parking (crazy valuable in San Francisco), 401k match, no premium health insurance, employer contribution to Health Savings Account, the list goes on
+ Really smart co-workers who treat each other exceptionally well
+ If you do well you can get promoted relatively quickly and you have a lot of options to work on other products, team, geographies, etc.
Cons: - It's an enormous and bureaucratic company which means long cycles for decision makings, difficult to corral resources, very siloed work groups, etc. (that being said most people are only a Skype call or an email away and people actually respond if you have a reason to be contacting them)
- Your happiness is dependent on your manager - there are a lot of good managers, but there's a lot of bad ones too
- Sales culture is fairly passive compared to competitors, I often wish we were more aggressive in marketing and sales campaigns