Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-07-17
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Rewarding, challenging and for your career you get out what you put in.
Pros: Access to technology at scales and budgets that are really big. Flexibility and freedom to manage your own work.  You can have impact and build great things that impact people's lives. Compensation is fairly good, but you won't be driving the Ferrari unless you are highly compensated partner level VP (I.e. not an average engineer that actually writes code and develops software).  Benefits are pretty good, but if you are younger and no family you don't really exercise them and option for higher comp would be appreciated instead. The technology and engineering discipline are fun and challenging and there are many great minds to learn from.
Cons: Once you are inside the ms bubble, you have 3 numbers:  employee ID, stock level and review score. The rest of your life is tied to these arbitrary numbers. It is in your best interest to get hired in at highest stock level possible. In practice, stock level will dictate your base salary and stock awards while review score (1 thru 5 with 1 the highest) dictates bonus and usually promo. The review system of "stack rank" promotes disunity, dysfunction and discord.  It is a cancer. Think hunger games. By the way I get 1's consistently and I still feel awful for the others that worked harder (but not smarter) than me.  Your direct "lead" is useless, with no management training or accountability your lead feels lie a peer instead of a mentor. You must actively seek out mentors on your own.  Career advancement is slow and not always in your control. You could have a great year and get a 1 but be told that you haven't been in your current level long enough. So, go kick butt for another year and hope for Pomo next time.  2 years in your level is considered pretty good. Again, make sure you start as high as possible, it takes a while to climb that ladder!