Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-09-29
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former

Awesome tools, great teammates
Pros: The Microsoft internet divisions have a great separation between Dev/Ops (who make sure that the SCOPE/Cosmos/Dryad systems just work, though sometimes with long queue times) and the Big Data developers (who just need to write SQL-like SCOPE code with C# customizations, and schedule their jobs in the Æther graph-based scheduler).  This lets developers focus on getting their jobs done.  The task-planning system is scrum-based, with short cycle times.
Cons: There are no clearly defined paths or benchmarks for moving from contract work to permanent (aka FTE) positions.