Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-06-28
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Circa 2015: Some new paint, same old walls...
Pros: - Depending on the team, you can get a great work-life balance. . If you find a good manager in an area that you like to work on, it is a very low stress environment.
- You will get good resources, unlike in startups, or medium-size companies. The company does have resources, and if you land in the lucky areas in which it is investing heavily, no expense will be spared.
- Total compensation package is still good. You can definitely get more money at some other competitors, but rarely a total compensation package that is guaranteed. Don’t be fooled by that lucky guy who left at the right time many years ago: for each of those, there are dozens of others who left and are back at Microsoft after burning their savings.
Cons: - Lots of high-level managers no longer get anything about tech. They just prepare and present slides, with lots of help, and forward messages. You need to ignore upper management and still execute correctly, while giving credit to them in long congratulation messages at the end of the tasks, so they forget what they told you to do and think the implemented ideas came from them!
- Microsoft can cash current cows for a little while. Because of this, you will see groups of longtime friends in key positions, even when those are related to innovation, just trying to repeat circa 2015 what they did 10 or 15 years ago.
- Coming from a recent "non-calibration" meeting in which we were supposed to discuss impact: pure BS. Lots of people will get bad rewards next September based on their perceived lack of loyalty to the team or managers. It is all about the commitment to the team, and how well the person is getting along with peers.