Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-10-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

A company that lost its way and is trying to recover.
Pros: My first experience with Microsoft was in 1988, so I've seen a lot of change over the years.
- Great people to work with.
- Compensation package is great.
- Big company with a lot of breadth so there are lots of opportunities to try on new roles, new organizations and new projects.
Cons: - If you go the PM route, you could end up working on a V-team. However you'll be rated against the impact of your peers by your direct organization who don't have V-team responsibilities and therefore make more on an impact in the direct organization.
- People management can end up distancing you from the product or technology and this could hurt you when you look at other roles in the Microsoft.
- People are still rewarded for stating "I don't get it" and forcing a team to revisit decisions. This can make it hard to exit the planning stage and move to implementation. I found this to be very demoralizing. A project that should have been done in two months took six instead because of constant resets by external teams.