Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-04-16
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Innovators are not risks, not assets.
Pros: Lots of challenges, amazing opportunities, and if you enjoy being diplomatic, you'll go very far. The trick to working at Microsoft is doing what you're told every time and asking for more. If you're able to do that, promotion velocity is high, rewards are strong, and you'll have a relatively stable career. 

Some teams are very in line with the startup mindset (looking at you: Bing, Outlook, Exchange, Skype, Xbox, and IoT).

Benefits are decent, prime card is awesome, food is good, people are cool.
Cons: In list form. 
- Management does not know how to handle or reward innovators or tinkerers. If you're the type who asks "why" often, you'll eventually become unhappy because you do work for shareholders and they do set the direction. 
- Asking why will actually get you into a lot of trouble in some cases because you'll be looked at as a risk. 
- The current "culture change" is not moving fast enough (if at all). The CEO and low level management are very out of sync. 
- Because of the culture change, many new problems are coming to light... (what do you do when you find something more pressing than your day job? Do what's right for your customers, or do what you're told? The former should be rewarded even when it contradicts the latter) 
- Many of the hackathon winners feel like they weren't rewarded or appreciated from their efforts at OneWeek. Some teams felt like their efforts were absorbed, taken, or dropped (to be fair to Microsoft, it was a work event and I sort of feel they shouldn't be that upset over this. To be fair to those people, the did bring a bunch of new innovation to Microsoft and were not actually rewarded in many cases)
- The recent focus on hiring diverse talent is being spearheaded by lower level management who are actively trying to manage diverse talent out. (I'm specifically referring to a group of people but I'm not going to say which group. I will say it has nothing to do with race, sex, gender, or similar.) 
- The current review system is heavily based on your relationship with your manager and your value to your manager, not your impact. (there's a slider...) 

*this will not be the same for every team.... Sadly, this is the case for the team I'm on *