Microsoft

There are good, passionate people working there. Even in my chaotic org, I liked most of the people I directly worked with and felt supported by them.

The company culture ever since the mass layoffs that started in 2023 has degraded significantly, with constant anxiety and uncertainty around job stability. Constant re-orgs in my org made it extremely hard to build the foundations for good career growth.

On top of all that, the AI mandates going around, at least in my org when I was there, are pushing what I believe are unhealthy and unsustainable expectations about how fast work can get done. It's debatable whether it's making people actually more productive or only just appearing more productive. I can believe there are valuable niche use cases for AI, but the speed and intensity with which it's being pushed into large parts of the company with little regard for whether it actually makes sense is, in my opinion, extremely reckless.

Stop shuffling people around so much, and stop pushing AI so hard. Give people the space and time to do good, strong work, instead of pushing for speed at any cost.