Company: Microsoft
Date: 2016-01-16
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Lots of learning, awesome people, politics getting better
Pros: - The benefits are very good. Like everyone else they are trying to cut costs but still they were above average in the industry. I moved from Microsft to Google and definitely the medical benefits and most of other are the same. 
- Company is huge so there is a lot of space to find interesting projects in almost any computer science field.
- Company invests in teaching. There is an entire division dedicated to internal education and you can learn a lot if you are driven and plan your time well. You get time off for this so it is not double duty.
- In my experience the people are professional and friendly especially if you are an engineer up to mid-level management (dev leads, dev managers). 
- Ballmer is gone. The new guy Satya seems to know what he is doing. I get this from the many friends I have left at Microsoft and from watching the public moves the company makes. 
- They are stongly poitioned to take advantage of the cloud revolution (Azure is a distant number two after Amazon)
Cons: - There is some politics from mid-level up (quite a lot). This affects everybody because it results in teams being realigned, moved around, competing projects etc. 
- Company has the two cash cows struggling. Windows ecosystem (outside cloud) is disappearing and Office has some stiff competition. But they are trying to do the right thing
- Company is still recovering from the huge mishandling of the mobile presence (the Nokia deal, the Windows Phone OS going noewhere, etc.)