Microsoft reviews

* Microsoft's senior leadership talk a good game, but working on a team day to day doesn't reflect the reality * Way too many egotistical, toxic senior engineers who have coasted for years and silo'd domain knowledge and are "too technical" to let go are the ones who truly run the show. Pray you don't find yourself on a team with one of these. * Outdated tools for building and deploying means even simple straightforward changes are painful to get through, doubly so for legacy products * Lateral moves are completely self-driven. Nobody really cares about your individual career advancement. Managers are too stressed out to do anything but get their features shipped in time * People rave about the WLB but this is entirely team dependent and individually driven. I often see people arrive before 8am and don't leave until past 7pm. * Long meetings. Inefficient meetings. Meetings meetings meetings where people tend to ask "smart" questions and nothing really productive comes out of it

There is very limited upside if you have worked there for more than 12 years. The funnel starts to become very, very, very narrow for opportunities and growth possibilities. Unless you have solved world hunger in hte last 12 months, you will be asked to leave at some point - so be ready with Plan B. You are almost guaranteed the necessity of pulling the rip cord.