Microsoft

Nice Buildings, Free Soft Drinks

In 3 years, I moved between 5 managers. Layoffs were happening, and people were quitting left and right. Things did settle down a bit. What I saw was that either a manager likes you or he doesn't. Managers don't check on code; it's all about perception. I've seen engineers work their way up with crappy code. The next guy in line has to clean up the mess. Fixing bugs doesn't earn you points at all.

Senior leadership ruled like dictators. If you break the dev build (not even the prod build), you will be shamed, and your check-in privileges are revoked. Abusive language is used at times. This meant the blame game was played. Private emails were forwarded around. Project managers fresh out of school were hired to boss you around. A dev only writes code was the mantra.

In 3 years, I slowly felt the soul sucked out of me. They pay you well, but to them, you are just a dev who will work 60-70 hours. You'd see people working weekends and late nights. It is highly frowned upon to only work 8 hours.