College hires or junior employees will probably have 5 to 10 good years at Microsoft. If you're not on the "management track" or senior level by then, it will serve you best to move on to new things. By that time, the experience gained will help you to be more successful elsewhere.
The most important thing you can learn here is how to make enterprise software scalable and best practices in engineering.
In many orgs, team dynamics are just bad. Too much bloat in process and personnel. The culture is highly dependent on email, even within teams sitting together in the same building. Many teams struggle to implement lean/agile effectively. About two-thirds of Program Managers seem to be clueless and do not have any real accountability.
The middle management culture is risk-averse and has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The worst part is many of those middle managers float around the company, transferring from group to group without passion or fresh ideas.
Because of that churn, in most orgs, there will be morale-killing and sometimes pointless re-orgs a couple times each year. Depending on your manager, you may periodically have some anxiety about Microsoft's notoriously Darwinian performance review system.
Too many rigid and artificial HR processes.
Work on the company culture, which is too political, outdated, and doesn't fit well with agile development processes.
Reform the program manager discipline.
I received a call from a recruiter after applying online. I had a very basic telephonic interview, followed by a full-day in-person interview. Overall, the experience was positive.
I had one on-campus interview and was then flown to Redmond for on-site interviews. I was never informed which team would be interviewing me. On the day of the interview, I finally found out it was the User Experience group. I was a purely systems g
The first interview was on-campus. I received an email that I had passed two weeks later, but it took nearly two months to schedule the final round interviews. The trip was planned and paid for by Microsoft. The day started with lunch on their campu
I received a call from a recruiter after applying online. I had a very basic telephonic interview, followed by a full-day in-person interview. Overall, the experience was positive.
I had one on-campus interview and was then flown to Redmond for on-site interviews. I was never informed which team would be interviewing me. On the day of the interview, I finally found out it was the User Experience group. I was a purely systems g
The first interview was on-campus. I received an email that I had passed two weeks later, but it took nearly two months to schedule the final round interviews. The trip was planned and paid for by Microsoft. The day started with lunch on their campu