Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-10-02
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Great pay/benefits & opportunities... but you'll work hard for it, and culture can be brutal.
Pros: Good pay & benefits. Good career opportunities and training programs, particularly for straight-out-of-college - career development is well-structured and easy to understand, and plenty of access to mentors. Overall, an excellent place for the early phase of your career (build savings early, and grow quickly as a professional).
Cons: You'll work hard for that good pay (and with the modern services direction, you'll be expected to commit availability beyond 8 hours a day - product engineer on-call duty, weekend deployment, etc.). Also, the company's very cultural DNA (from foundation) is hyper-competitive and focused on survival-of-the-fittest no matter the cost - be prepared to make peace with the fact that your peers are not 'workmates' but rather 'competitors' and 'threats' - there's a reason MS is renowned for breeding and/or attracting brutally-competitive personalities who fight civil wars while the empire crumbles.