Company: Microsoft
Date: 2018-07-30
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Great vision, benefits but culture/day to experience depends on your group and manager
Pros: Microsoft really has changed its vision in the past couple of years to reverse course to focus on empowering all people and organizations with its technology.  The benefits are fantastic and there psd tons of flexibility to work from home or wherever you are most comfortable/productive. 
There are a lot of smart people and the company is on the forefront of tons of cool technology.  As a full time employee you can access a lot of information and learn tons about what other groups are building
Cons: Communication style is very top down with major reorg announcements being forwarded on from top leadership without any clarity on how this impacts your role in the future.  There were reorgs every 6 months while I was there so you just get used to it. 
There isn't really a "management culture" here unlike other big/mature companies I've worked at.   Some managers are promoted for being a good IC which means managing up and not being interested in coaching.  It's very subjective what makes a top performer and varies by group.  They're changing the review process but its still opaque. 
Big company with lots of politics.  Sometimes it feels like you're working in the government and not in the fast paced tech sector.  Different groups will start similar projects, then senior managers lobby for each one and there's very little assurance that anything you create or run will continue into the next fiscal year (especially if there's a reorg).  This can be very demotivating for someone with pilot programs as you never get to iterate on ideas.