Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-03-06
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Spent a third of my life working there, enjoyed the first ten years
Pros: When I started there it was a company full of wickedly smart people who all worked tirelessly, and sometimes isolated, to move the company forward.  It was always a meritocracy and I was ok with that as you got to work on cutting edge technologies.  The career development there was stellar and I was presented with multiple international opportunities that allowed me to make my home in the USA with stints in Europe and Asia to round out my experience.
Cons: Over the last few years the changes to the review model killed collaboration, you became pitched lock step in battle with your peers fighting for a review score that you could apply a dollar amount to.  I understand that has gone now and that is the only reason why I give it three stars now as there is a chance that the changes will fix this.  

The company has too much middle management and a lot of it is mediocre.  Sadly I became one of those mediocre middle managers because I could not connect the work that my 80+ person team was doing with the success of the company and my game face wasn't good enough to help motivate my team.  So I got out and haven't looked back since.  I just learned my team is about to get cut by 75% as they are being 'merged' with another one.