Microsoft

People around me are very smart. It is enjoyable to work with them (most of the time).

There are a lot of opportunities to learn. The problems that we are solving are amazing, and not many companies have the opportunity to work on such large-scale systems. There are also people in this company who have been here for 30+ years and are the best experts in the world. You can reach out to them, ask questions, and they will reply and help you out.

People are respected. No one cares when you came to work or when you left home, if you have worked 2 hours or 12 hours, as long as at the end of the year you have the expected impact for your level. Salaries are great, and stock awards are available on Senior+ levels as well.

You can often work on things which are either very far from the customer or very far from the real money, so it is sometimes hard to quantify your results, unlike in smaller companies where this is easier.

Iterating is slower than in startups, as there are a lot of procedures, designed to help us avoid mistakes; however, usually they slow you down by e.g. 10-40%.

Salaries were amazing at one point, now they are on par with a lot of startups here.

If you want to progress faster, you usually need to work pretty hard. If you are OK with a slower pace, your WLB will be much better.