Company: Microsoft
Date: 2018-03-20
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Great company to work at
Pros: I spent the last 14 years of my life at Microsoft. In the last few  years, the excitement was brought back by the new management. The new direction is clearer, more in line with  the industry needs.
There are frustrations there like anywhere else, but I always got the feeling that if you put some  effort into it, you could have a great career. And the different teams offer different cultures, so you can move around inside the company and  really keep the excitement going.
The people you work with are brilliant for the most part, and that is  definitely something I'll miss. Other companies have brilliant people too, I'm just saying that  most people at Microsoft I interacted with were really smart and it was great.
Most projects I worked on in Windows were really exciting, and touched the lives of millions of users. That's not something you get in all companies for sure.
Work-life balance is really good. I would say you  can control it: more hours will get you a better career, and that makes sense. Fewer hours  means less progression, but as long as you're doing a good job and meeting your  goals, you'll be  fine.
The use of telemetry and user feedback is getting really common and really helps deliver products that satisfy our customers.
Cons: Sometimes heavy infrastructure and processes, even though with the  shorter release cycles  have helped a lot with agility.
Sometimes, new V1 products do not feel like they're up to par with the legacy products they are replacing, then the V2 version often gets cancelled, so it sometimes feel like we are going slightly backwards in terms of functionality. Again, this seems to get better with the use of telemetry as we tend to focus on functionality that is most useful to customers.