Microsoft

Great benefits.

Develop leading-edge technologies with huge impact.

Diverse problems to solve.

Stack ranking makes teammates your competition and incites turf wars.

Stack ranking can lead to a vicious cycle: Since stack ranking works like a highly stochastic merge sort, if you are a good contributor on a team with superb teammates working on a risky project that does not pan out, you will likely get a poor review. This happened to me after initial good reviews. Being the last rat to leave the sinking ship, I watched my teammates leave for other teams and companies. My poor rating made it impossible to leave my team and led to continued poor ratings, so I eventually left under duress.

Management should provide more help to employees with poor reviews. Employees should also feel empowered to change jobs to find a position with a better fit.