Microsoft

Microsoft has so many internal resources with great opportunities for learning. I've worked on various teams, and there is a lot of interesting work, and contributions are valued. One of the many things the company values is a growth mindset, and we regularly look at and discuss our processes and take steps to improve them. Each team has the flexibility to do this in the manner that works best for them. We also have lots of great opportunities for cross-team collaboration, and it's fun to work with other teams and learn about how they do things.

The work is interesting, but with constantly scheduled deliverables and deadlines, it can be challenging to take advantage of the great resources the company provides. It's important for you to make the time for personal growth.

Work with the team to make sure people have time to participate in growth experiences. For a developer, a great way to do this is to actively participate in hackathons. I think that management could be more supportive and encouraging for people to participate in them, and should schedule them more frequently. I previously worked at a company that initially reserved one Friday a month for everyone to participate in hackathons; this evolved over time to a full week every few months (3 or 4 times per year). That allowed time to create significant projects, and the company greatly benefited from that.