Microsoft

• Good side benefits & employee perks
• Nearly unlimited learning resources and material
• MSFT stock has been killing it
• Great products to be proud of
• General trend and direction of MSFT overall has been good
• Rewarding and fun experience, provided you have a good manager

• Compensation is not competitive unless you get bonuses. They will make up reasons not to give you good bonuses, despite you going above and beyond and delivering beyond expectations.

• Your enjoyment at Microsoft depends entirely on your manager and skip-level manager.

• Microsoft is driven by a top-down culture; nothing bubbles up unless your managers do it for you (and they're too scared to disagree with VPs).

• "Yes" culture and lying in Azure. Facades and half-baked solutions exist because everything is rushed to simply get the MVP to answer "yes." You will find your managers and developers lying all the time to look better on the surface.

• Nepotism & bro culture. They pretend that they are fixing this issue, but you will still find a significant amount of teams that only hire the same race and gender (generally men). These teams have been around for over 5 years, and they have no interest in changing that dynamic.

• Odd situations occur where female leadership will promote only women, regardless of the actual work they are doing and merit.

• No actual career growth as a 10xer. It's completely made up, and they will still fit you into a box designed by HR.

• Random VPs and principals get promotions or are laid off mid-year out of the blue. There is no justification or input from us below, just behind-the-scenes handshake deals between nepotists. You're at the mercy of these re-orgs as attitudes shift and people up above start revealing their true colors.

• Toxic, unproductive employees or managers exist and are ignored and unchecked. Don't waste your time with HR unless you plan on lawyering up yourself.

• For both internal and external products that have terrible infrastructure, it's always due to poor management chains and a lack of feedback loops.

Microsoft doesn't take advice.