Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-10-11
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Great comp/perks; difficult to advance, still living in the past
Pros: Good work-life balance, great benefits, understanding supervisors and managers. Terrific company giving program. Clarity and transparency about the path toward advancement, though that path is very long.
Cons: Bureaucratic. Example: if you need to purchase non-Microsoft software to do your job, the process can take 6 weeks. Generally you will feel as though none of your ideas actually get shipped and that can make your work feel meaningless. Overall company culture is insulated from the rest of the technology sector and still living in the 90s. Example: employees attacking other employees on Yammer for owning iPhones (instead of Windows Phones). The path to advancing and becoming a manager is incredibly long. It seems like it would be faster to leave, advance to a management position elsewhere, then come back and leverage a higher position that way.