Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-12-22
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Over 10 years at company and love the work environment.
Pros: Working with great team and great business partners supporting sales & marketing org. Tons of opportunities supporting all the different business groups, functional orgs such as Marketing, Retail, Entertainment, Devices and Services orgs as well as various areas around the world. Employees in Finance can pursue great opportunities to support any mix of these organizations and areas. Some managers allow flexibility to simply do a great job and reward employees based on performance which means you can decide which meetings to prioritize, work from home, etc. Just do a great job, provide status updates in weekly or bi-weekly 1:1 meetings and/or team meetings and you are rewarded based on feedback from business partners, lots of opportunities for awards and other recognition. 

Microsoft recently eliminated the forced ranking which is great. Even employees that received the top ratings are happy because we work with teammates that would get a 3 (avg) and not happy and those are teammates so we need them to be happy in order to have a good working environment. With the new review system I expect a great work environment! We are a company of top-performing employees so we all strive for the top ratings and 3's are not a good review (like getting a C in school) so I'm really happy with the change.
Cons: Like with most jobs your happiness will partly depend on your manager, your team and your business partners. If you are considering interviewing make sure to ask plenty of questions to make sure your goals are aligned with the manager and team. Unfortunately, the turnover is quite high at Microsoft due to people moving into new roles every 2-3 years which is encouraged. This means you may take a job and have a new manager in 6 months and the new manager may or may not have the management style you work well with; but you only have to wait a year to move to another role. In over 10 years I've had a new manager once per year on average with almost all of them being good managers and a couple great ones. Most are hands off which means you need to learn your job and do your job without backup. You own your career at Microsoft which can be a pro or con depending on what you want. Just know that you need to focus on doing your best and push for yourself. Managers are supportive but don't proactively help out - it's on you to make your career what you want.