Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-03-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

A sometimes intellectually challenging but always toxic work environment
Pros: *Some* smart people to work with, but you have to look long and hard to find them.
Challenging problems to work on, but finding them is getting harder and harder.
Relative autonomy if you do good work (but don't dream of working from home regularly).
Good pay and reasonable benefits, *if* you've been there long enough.
Cons: Incompetent leadership (even post Ballmer), with many leaders promoted from an internal "old boys network." Hard for everyone else to advance beyond a certain level.
Zero leadership accountability (but great skill at buck-passing).
No coherent or executable vision (eg, compare Microsoft's grand aspirations for the future of its mobile business with the reality of the marketplace).
Size makes it hard for good new ideas to break through bureaucracy, processes and divisional "not invented here" syndromes.
Widespread discrimination against female employees in mid level positions (and a bulletproof glass ceiling except for a few token appointments).
One of the worst healthcare plans in the tech industry (used to be by far the best), and relatively poor work/life balance. HR department, once one of Microsoft's secret weapons, now very weak.
Cares little about retaining the best and brightest (many of whom have left the company).