Microsoft

• Office for almost each employee.
• Working on products seen and used by billions.
• Large and variable set of automation, synchronization, and coding.
• Large and awesome set of training courses.
• Excellent name recognition: I do not have to explain where I work or what I do.
• Windows is the strongest and most technical part of Microsoft.

After the design phase, you focus on very narrow stuff, which limits your learning.

Good visible projects are assigned based on your relation to level-2 managers. If the relation is good, then you get good projects and good reviews. Otherwise, you are screwed.

Technical excellence is not the key in survival, but communicating every single item you work on to anybody and everybody, plus courting them, is. Sometimes, it is just too corny.

Try to move to Project Manager (fastest promotions) or to development (2nd fastest promotions), and avoid test, as it will affect your job seeking afterwards.

I have been exposed to higher management: directors and VPs. Managers try hard to cover their shortcomings more than handling product quality. Anyone who may threaten this will result in their demise.

Second, Microsoft is a very powerful company, and we had core issues that led to our success: openness to third-party developers and our ecosystem. The trend of secrecy to increase the "wow" factor, copied from Apple, is not very good for our company.