Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-09-21
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Great company but the flexibility is a double edge sword
Pros: It's a friendly company with exciting products and the sense of pride in what the company offers can be felt at all levels of the organisation.  Employees are treated like grown ups - there is no presenteeism culture.
Cons: The pace is absolutely relentless - although there is masses of flexibility in terms of where you work it means that you are "always on".  Everyone I knew routinely worked evenings and weekends to get the job done.  Although working patterns are flexible, there are little to no part time opportunities.  Everything is scorecard driven and there is heavy pressure on managers to manage out a proportion of staff each year which drives the wrong behaviours in many cases.  More and more heads are being cut but the work doesn't go anywhere which means people are just expected to take on more.