Microsoft

• Good insurance
• Beautiful campus and perks
• Well-structured/established company

• AI expense is too large.
• Employees are fearful of getting laid off and frequent reorgs.
• Layoffs are irrelevant to performance.
• No free lunch.
• Opportunities are limited. It's PM-driven and top-down.
• Low annual stock compensation compared to peer big tech companies.
• Security devices are a headache. They are very slow to work with, but the admin refuses to replace my 4+ year old workstation due to budget reasons.
• Starting this year, your performance is compared strictly with peers. Engineers are getting stressed out to increase the number of code review counts and pull requests.
• Promo is political. You have to convince other people like PMs and staff engineers, making them like you regardless of the complexity of the project and impact.

Stop laying off employees because of AI efficiency. You can ask employees to improve productivity and create more products.