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Great place to learn how to really develop software

Software Development Engineer II
Former Employee
Worked at Microsoft for 6 years
February 27, 2014
Redmond, Washington
4.0
RecommendsNeutral OutlookApproves of CEO
Pros

Microsoft is still relevant and has great development processes, but do try to join an org that wholly adopts agile if that's your thing. I've seen both Scrum and waterfall done well. I've also seen a large org make the shift, and they were quite successful.

There really is nothing like being at MSFT when your org is asked to create a new product. It's staggering what 250 engineers can do in short timeframes with high quality.

If you are early in your career, you'll get great experience here.

As the workforce has gentrified, work-life balance has improved a lot.

Cons

New college hires do usually put in longer than average hours while competing for promotions due to the stack rank.

At higher levels, political savvy is extremely helpful to get promoted. Lots of cross-group collaboration is needed to get others on your manager's side for the stack rank.

Advice to Management

It's hard to say since the company is under new management. I worked for Satya, and I respect his leadership.

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