Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-02-11
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Place to Shine, Place to Crash and Burn
Pros: Brilliant people, amazing energy and focus on excellence at every level. Vision and mission transmitted reasonably clearly. Fairly non hierarchical (compared to other companies) this is not always appreciated. People have amazing heart and passion - a close family. Great products, and a work environment that encourages and stimulates individual excellence  and creates opportunities to make an incredible difference in the world.
Cons: Pressure to succeed super high. Work life balance difficult - you are always on. Cross group collaboration often challenging.  Hard to move up and secure promotion. In my opinion, 'Senior managers' (director and above) were too focused 'managing up' and not developing and investing time in their own teams