Microsoft

Pay was overall decent, and projects were generally interesting. Some people were very nice, and I had members of my team volunteer to go to HR to protest my treatment by management.

I am female and hearing impaired, and faced discrimination on both levels. I also witnessed racial discrimination.

When I pointed out an architectural flaw in the system, I was called a drama queen and ignored, until the system self-imploded from said flaw a few months later (of course I got no credit for pointing it out).

I was never invited to team events and was blatantly told it was because I was a girl by other team members. I was the only female engineer on the team. My manager thought topics like strippers were perfectly OK work conversation.

As for hearing loss discrimination, it got progressively worse over time. People joked about me: "Don't tell me to do something, I'll just hear it wrong."

This grew to being told not to talk in meetings, not being invited to meetings, and being told not to answer anything verbally. The only thing I was told I was allowed to verbally say was "I'll get back to you with that" and answer via e-mail.

I was also told I was only allowed to answer e-mails in one or two sentences. Then all project ownership was taken away from me and given to someone else so they could "manage my communication."

I wear hearing aids and can lip read. All I needed was people to face me and talk one at a time, but they refused to do that and cut me out instead. I was told that as long as my "verbal communication problems" persisted, I would never be promoted again.

The only non-white member of my team had his computer hacked into by our mutual manager. The manager could send e-mails out from that person's computer when that person wasn't there, and effectively managed to destroy his e-mail credibility to the point where when the guy sent out an "I quit!" e-mail, no one at first believed him.

Then the manager joked with someone else that I hadn't acted up enough for him to do that to me yet. I complained to HR about the whole incident, but nothing happened.

Those involved got away with everything, and are still at the company. HR said they saw no problems with any of this behavior.

Take discrimination seriously! I know many people who were blown off.