Microsoft

I spent the last 14 years of my life at Microsoft.

In the last few years, the excitement was brought back by the new management. The new direction is clearer and more in line with the industry's needs.

There are frustrations there, like anywhere else, but I always got the feeling that if you put some effort into it, you could have a great career. The different teams offer different cultures, so you can move around inside the company and really keep the excitement going.

The people you work with are brilliant for the most part, and that is definitely something I'll miss. Other companies have brilliant people too, but most people at Microsoft I interacted with were really smart, and it was great.

Most projects I worked on in Windows were really exciting and touched the lives of millions of users. That's not something you get in all companies, for sure.

Work-life balance is really good. I would say you can control it: more hours will get you a better career, and that makes sense. Fewer hours mean less progression, but as long as you're doing a good job and meeting your goals, you'll be fine.

The use of telemetry and user feedback is getting really common and really helps deliver products that satisfy our customers.

Sometimes heavy infrastructure and processes, even though with the shorter release cycles, have helped a lot with agility.

Sometimes, new V1 products do not feel like they are up to par with the legacy products they are replacing. Then, the V2 version often gets cancelled, so it sometimes feels like we are going slightly backwards in terms of functionality.

Again, this seems to get better with the use of telemetry, as we tend to focus on functionality that is most useful to customers.

Keep doing the transition work for more agile development and customer-centric features. I like the new direction the company is going. Keep bringing exciting components and revive the innovation to compete with Google and others.