Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-06-04
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Software Engineer
Pros: You can achieve pretty good work life balance at Microsoft. Work is generally not hard, especially if you're not ambitious, you're told what to do, just get in, put in your hours, and get out, and you'll do better than 90% percent of people who are already there. Benefits are pretty decent, with the exception of the medical plan, which is a high-deductible HSA type deal. There are small pockets within the company which are still pretty good.
Cons: The company is dying. People are disenchanted, unimaginative, and in general just don't care. A lot of things are "the way they've always been". Way too much people who have been there for 15-20 years and don't know any better. Terrible fragmentation between teams makes collaboration next to impossible. Unnecessarily rigid scheduling leads to sandbagging and hampers quality. Way too many PMs. People aren't interested in helping you _at all_, moreover, come review time it is not uncommon for backstabbing to break out. HR pretending that rather obvious cost cutting measures are "better for the employees". Heavy weight top-down culture. If you like to work with minimal interference, this is not the company where you will be able to do so.