Company: Microsoft
Date: 2020-10-16
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Highly political but rewarding experience
Pros: - At the forefront of technology
- A strong brand with positive global recognition
- Smart people everywhere
- Lots of opportunities to moves within the company and get a variety of exposure
- Great campus, lots of activities and restaurants in cafes
- Wonderful connector buses to take you from meeting to meeting
- Projects are interesting, work is rewarding when we ship 
- We build on our own cloud services, which is really a nice differentiator 
- Redmond area is beautiful, and there are paths around campus that go through woody areas for a run during lunch break
- Benefits are fantastic
Cons: - it takes at least a year to "get Microsoft". If you're a senior member joining from the outside, don't expect to make waves your first few months. Microsoft is very relationship based, and to build relationships takes time.
- Politics. It's everywhere and you can't avoid it. There's a lot of people waiting for their moment to shine, and will take credit any opportunity that they can for others work, just to justify their involvement.
- Too many meetings. It's actually a bit out of control. For every executive meeting, expect at least 4 prep meetings to get to that meeting.
- Diversity is also a con. Most senior tech leaders are men. The way of doing work is very aggressive, so the women that do make it that far are usually not very likeable.
- Re-orgs are constantly happening. In one year I had 6 managers. I get it, we have to change org structures constantly to keep up with market demands. But 6? really?
- Since the pandemic, I'm working constantly 12 hours a day. It's not sustainable.