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A great place to end up working, after you've had your fill of startups

Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET)
Current Employee
Has worked at Microsoft for less than 1 year
May 25, 2008
Mountain View, California
5.0
RecommendsApproves of CEO
Pros

Reasonable work hours ("crunch" weeks are far and few between), excellent benefits (all-inclusive - no copayments even required), regional pay adjustments for cost-of-living differences (Bay Area pay was 15% higher than "standard" salaries for comparable job levels when I first joined).

I've also had very good experiences with being rewarded for doing good work, in the form of stock awards, cash bonuses, and time off.

Products being developed are very diverse, so there's a great opportunity to move between different technologies, markets, and even project scales (hundred-man projects down to teams of just a handful of people).

The company is very stable (having been around a while).

Cons

Big company mentality - it often feels like there isn't much innovation going on. Sometimes it seems like the cards are stacked against trying to do something too new or creative.

It's also a bit frustrating at times to be under the restraints of all of the antitrust suits which have been going on. Cross-product integration is very tightly examined to ensure there will be no legal ramifications, down to one case where a partner team couldn't explain the format of data they were consuming to our team, because doing so would require them to document/explain it to the general public.

Advice to Management

Loosen the reins on the Internet Services Division a little; some crazy new ideas may just be what could boost some of the online service products.

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