Microsoft

1. People are really smart and often very hard-working; you feel very nice working with them.

2. Benefits are really nice, and the salary is also good.

3. The breadth of products that Microsoft has is extensive: Native Apps (Office), OS (Windows), SQL, Cloud services (Azure), Search engines (Bing), Dev tools (VS), Compilers and runtimes (CLR), and languages (ASP, C#, VB). In short, there is a lot to learn and perform. If you don't like something, you can move to a different team.

4. Also, you sometimes get to work with great research teams in MSR and often on cool and new stuff.

Due to the size of the company, all divisions are different. In fact, coding/engineering practices, tools, and computer languages used differ from team to team. Collaboration between teams is now being encouraged but could be better. If a project goes hot or red, then work-life balance could go for a toss; otherwise, for me, it is acceptable.

Collaboration between teams could be better. When projects get scrapped midway and teams get realigned a lot, it sends the wrong message to people below (lack of strategic thought). There should be more and better training.

Overall, the new change that Satya is trying to make is very nice and has worked well so far, but we need to keep at it, as there is much to change.