Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-10-23
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Fresh Out Of College - Now, Three Years In
Pros: Microsoft has some great opportunities.  You can get your feet wet working on some products that will affect millions of people, there's tons of different things going on, and as a college hire fresh out of the box, I got a lot of training, mentoring and support.  I would recommend working in Redmond - I'm at a remote site and, while there are still opportunities there, you don't get the culture and enthusiasm that you do at the mothership.
Cons: The stack ranking system rewards bad behavior.  Getting noticed is what drives up your performance review, not doing the work on your desk, and I've seen good people go under because of it.  The system just isn't incentivized to reward mentoring and people management.  My two best people managers were cast out of the company, despite getting consistently high rankings from their employees and mentoring the shining stars on our team.  It's just not valued, and it takes an individual's effort to buck the trend.  If you're management doesn't choose to be invested in you, then you're stuck.