Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-06-15
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Not for everyone
Pros: - Solid pay.
- Okay benefits (used to be better) and perks.  Little stuff, like cell phone plan discounts, or really cheap personal shipping.
- Work with smart people on cool stuff (depending on team).
- Potentially broad impact.
Cons: - Terrible concept of management.  (See Advice to Management below.)
- Obnoxious review system. Supposedly a "meritocracy," but it's invariably a bunch of gossipy political BS.  Through three or four different systems, this has been the one constant.
- Lousy work/life balance. If your only interests are programming and more programming, you'll be fine.
- At least as hyper-nerdy as you probably imagine. Don't expect many conversations about movies, music, current events, or really anything besides memory allocation or lambda variable capture considerations.