Company: Microsoft
Date: 2010-04-14
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

A great place to start your career in and simultaneously the worst place to stay employed for longer than 2 years
Pros: Very intelligent people to work with
Management is very open in sharing information
Industry flagship
Cons: Sweatshop and a grindhouse - A Dilbert like performance review system

Very rigid promotion system - internal vertical promotions are very uncommon and rare. For instance if you're a developer its highly unlikely you'll become a developer lead. What would usually happen is you will be promoted salary wise for exceptional work and a manager would be hired externally or from another MS division

It is expected that you would agree to a significant step back in your career. Most inidividual contributor positions (e.g. developers, testers, pms) used to be managers and/or small business owners.