Microsoft

Flexible working time with a fully remote option.

Compensation is so-so. Microsoft actually pays the least of the big tech companies (at least as of 2025). If you can get in at another big tech company, do that instead since you'd be dealing with a lot of nonsense in any big tech company for the salary you're being paid; make every dollar count.

Stock compensation can be good as long as the stock price is going up, but it serves as "golden handcuffs." If the stock price of Microsoft, for whatever reason, does not do well, it is not worth working here.

Mountains of red tape, stale documentation, and bureaucracy make working here a dreadful experience for engineers. There can be days where you spend most of the day just navigating bureaucracy that has nothing to do with actual engineering.

There's this concept of "One Microsoft" that tries to foster cohesion across teams. This is failing miserably as people are being laid off and teams are increasingly facing higher pressure to deliver on commitments, leading to unnecessary pushback across team boundaries.

Your direct manager (and skip-level manager) is going to make or break you at this company. If your direct manager is not informed on the engineering side of things or cannot give much guidance regarding engineering processes as a senior/principal engineer, you'd have to pick up the slack for them and potentially do their job. Avoid new (less than 5 years at the company) managers, especially managers who do not learn on the engineering side of things. Try to get into a team with a strong engineering manager who knows what's going on; this will set you up for success. If you end up under a manager who does not know what they're doing (to determine this, ask them technical questions and see whether they have at least some level of informed answer), aim to move to another team sooner than later.

Tied to the previous point, your direct manager can see when you apply for other positions in the company. Know that this has the potential to sour the relationship with your manager, which can impact your career opportunities at the company.

Engineers who stay at the company for a long time have to essentially work themselves into positions that are isolated from all the bureaucracy, red tape, and potential cross-team dependencies (think positions like code modernization that do not have a lot of cross-team dependencies besides getting PR approvals).

When engineers have to constantly work against bureaucracy and red tape, and try their best to isolate themselves from it, you must know you're doing something wrong.

Red tape ultimately translates into the quality of work being done and products delivered from the engineering side. If you wonder why your software is so buggy, not user-friendly, and unmaintainable, it's because engineers end up spending an inordinate amount of time doing work that is not related to delivering a quality solution.

Direct managers should not be able to see when an engineer applies for another position. Maybe the skip-level manager would be more appropriate, so that they can discuss movements with managers under them in a more anonymous fashion that would not directly impact the relationship between the engineer and their manager. I applied for another position in the company, and it immediately soured the relationship between myself and my direct manager to the point that it started to feel like she did everything in her power to try and get me laid off, which ultimately happened. I did not have any issues in the company under my previous manager.