Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-01-24
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Great company with smart people and toxic review process leading to ugly politics
Pros: An international thinking company with lots of opportunity.  Pay is OK and benefits are great.  Company tries harder than most to treat staff well.
Cons: Review process is competitive with your peers.  This means they gain if you lose and leads to "invisible" back stabbing and lack of collaboration.  Staff is group ranked by a commitee of their managers peers.  Most of them are not involved in the same business and don't know the people.  Good ranking comes from either: 
1) "Visibility" - which means that lots of internal (possibly non-productive) activities like joining social events and schmoozing with your bosses peers. 
or
2) "Political games" - where an experienced senior manager makes side deals with some of his peers to mutually support each other favorites for good ranking.