Microsoft

Microsoft is an iconic name that still attracts young professionals.

It looks good on a resume. Other companies know if you can manage the work/life balance at this company, then you are no slacker.

Pay is good for entry-level, but for industry hires, look elsewhere.

Smart people who are experts in what they do.

I can write many things here:

• Highly political company that rewards people that can play the game

  • Send a bunch of emails --> This shows you are working according to managers
  • Suck up to your manager --> This is how people are getting promoted
  • Do less of what is assigned to you and more of useless tools to have "impact" cross teams

• Stack ranking system with forced curve

  • Even if you have a team full of rock star engineers, 1 or 2 will be getting a rating of 4, 5.
  • This system forces competition among peers rather than collaboration.
  • Even if you work very hard to improve the feature/quality, you are not rewarded because it's "expected". While someone else can work 9-5 and do a silly script to automate stuff, they are valued.

• Far too many program managers

  • These people don't contribute less than a quarter of what engineers (SDE/SDET) do.
  • Great talented people that are forced into this role to do data entry.

Overall: Microsoft looks very good from the outside; however, it's a contrast when you are inside.

• Convert PMs into Software Engineers
• Remove forced curve on performance review