Company: Microsoft
Date: 2018-02-25
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Beware of gaslighting
Pros: Microsoft is a great place to launch or hone a career if you land in a department where the managers are focused on utilizing their people effectively and are genuinely invested in growing their teams in meaningful ways. You will have an opportunity to work with and learn from a ton of very smart people. You will enjoy good benefits.
Cons: Some departments and mangers use gaslighting as the method of choice for obfuscating internal politics and manipulating department outcomes. If, for example, a department wants to stretch its headcount dollars to add extra heads without officially getting any new headcount budget, managers will make it their fulltime jobs to convert a sufficient number of good performers into bad performers through review management techniques that slingshot off a review system that requires an employee and the employee’s colleagues to serve up areas of vulnerability under the disguise of opportunities for growth. In reality, there is generally nothing egregiously wrong with the employee’s performance. It is just that the employee happens to have fallen into the path of the manager’s short-term measure of success and so will be chewed up and spit out.  Generally, you became this person by performing well and being paid fairly for your first several years of good service.