Microsoft

There are good people there.

I made lots of friends and connections.

A wealth of technologies and roles can be yours.

Depending on the group, there's a good work-life balance.

The company itself appears to be on a good trajectory!

This may sound like "sour grapes" due to recently being laid off by them, but here goes.

(Note: Most of this has to do with the last group I was in. I hope many others find this NOT to be true.)

• No loyalty: After 10+ years, I came in one day and was let go with FIVE days to find a new job internally. HR doesn't even move that fast! It wasn't performance-based (it came as a surprise to my manager, too), and via the black box that is HR, I can only speculate why I was let go: politics? ageism? racism? I was too short? randomly? etc...

• Management in some orgs views devs as indistinct work units. "For project X, I need Y people." Talent, experience, etc., doesn't matter as much anymore; just someone with a pulse that's breathing and knows C#.

• Politics. Sure, most places have it, but my last position was the first time I've seen retributive actions taken by senior management to get rid of less-than-supportive team members (not me).

• Cronyism: I've seen my teammates not get funding for plane travel from their hometown to campus (Redmond) once every 3-6 months and thus traveled via bus. Meanwhile, friends of senior management fly home weekly to California. Friends and the "good ol' boys" are more important than the business or fairness. Even while I was getting laid off, certain "good ol' boys" were still hiring their friends from outside Microsoft.

• Sexism: Our group's leadership was entirely comprised of Indian males. Unfortunately, India has a prevalent sexist culture in many places, and this was transferred to our group. I have Indian friends (male and female) who agree with me, so please don't accuse me of being racist. The women in our group were frequently marginalized, and one quit after being told to "shut up and be quiet" during a meeting. Not wishing to cause waves, none of them wanted the bother and hassle of reporting it to HR, so they just left.

• Lack of support for remote folks. It's the 21st Century, and some entire orgs have a "no remote" policy.

Please protect women.

Give them a safe (anonymous?) space to report things.

The ones I spoke to knew that our HR contact was good friends with our senior management, and complaints (of which there were some) went nowhere.

The internet is wonderful and allows people to connect from all around the world.

Let them work there too.