Great people and some interesting products to work on. They do a good job with onboarding people and making Microsoft seem like a great place to be, but a poor job at retaining talent and getting you from mid-level to senior.
Little direction on how to get to the next level, but a lot of push to get there. Too many managers show favoritism and repeatedly reward their favorite employees with the best feature work, which leaves everyone else doing 'laundry' tasks.
The review system changes every 3-5 years, but is currently based on 'impact'. How 'impact' is defined is open to interpretation, so it may help or hurt you based on your deliverables for the year. Unfortunately, you have very little say on what you actually worked on, so just hope it was something considered 'impactful' enough to get a raise/bonus/promotion.
Make people a priority. If you want good products, you need to foster good talent. Try not to give all growth opportunities to a select few; you need to make an effort to help grow every developer on your team.
The interview process was a smooth one. The interviewers were very polite. Expect LeetCode and behavioral questions. All calls were virtual and lasted 1 hour each.
- Recruiter Interaction: Included a job fair and follow-up phone call. - Phone Screen: Standard technical screen covering resume projects and a coding problem. - 4 rounds of onsite interviews: - Each round included whiteboarding problems. - A
Screened for 1 hour. Asked about current responsibilities and learned about theirs. Programmed a list backwards. It was not too difficult but worked. Did not get through to the next round.
The interview process was a smooth one. The interviewers were very polite. Expect LeetCode and behavioral questions. All calls were virtual and lasted 1 hour each.
- Recruiter Interaction: Included a job fair and follow-up phone call. - Phone Screen: Standard technical screen covering resume projects and a coding problem. - 4 rounds of onsite interviews: - Each round included whiteboarding problems. - A
Screened for 1 hour. Asked about current responsibilities and learned about theirs. Programmed a list backwards. It was not too difficult but worked. Did not get through to the next round.