Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-09-24
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Premier Field Engineer role - Stay Away
Pros: The actual work with the customers is rewarding. There are opportunities to develop pretty much any technical skill you could dream of.
Cons: Management - the review system was recently replaced. While the prior review system was bad the new one is worse. Microsoft can not set to limit itself to objective criteria metrics like utilization, labor logging, case wellness, etc. These metric are set as goals, but would be ignored if the management wanted to. They will absolutely reward someone they think has "potential" even if they arent doing their core job. If a GM wants someone gone, no amount of work product or impact will be considered. All achievements will be minimized. There is a heavy favoritism system in place. In both review models, feedback was either sparse or non-existent. Managers aren't really "managing". Managers just recently were instructed to provide feedback in 1 on 1s. Dedicated PFE's are pretty much considered the bottom feeders in the organization. The work/life balance is terrible because of the uncertainty/lack of feedback. To make things worse, managers wont give you an example of work being done by "successful" PFEs, or suggest mentors. There are a lot of parasites in the organization that steal/rebrand other work as their own. The sycophants are running amok in public sector/fed civ and NSG. Good luck if you're a new hire off the street trying to make a name for yourself. They'll chew you up for 2-3 years until you leave. 
While there is a lot of training available, there is no time for it.