Microsoft reviews

The stock is flat. The weather in Seattle is generally lousy. The future of the company is not as rosy as the past. The traffic in the area is lousy during commute times. There is a general lack of innovation from the newer guys. They expect everything to come from a book.

Ironically, many of the downsides are the same as the upsides. The work ethic here is INSANE! For your employment anniversaries you get a giant prism/crystal and two cards. One: thanking you for your years of service and contributions to the company. Two: for your significant other, thanking him or her essentially for the sacrifices made as a result of being saddled with a Microsoftie for a S.O. Yes. Seriously. My husband gets a kick out of it everytime. (Ahem, at least Msft REMEMBERS anniversaries.) And, sacrifice, you will: there's a sub in every country. In other words: in every time zone. You'll take a lot of calls at odd hours in your pajamas and you'll bump into a lof of co-workers in the office on wkends. The place has grown tremendously since I started here. The Red-tape dispenser is endlessly full. The workload is huge and you can count on an annual re-org (usually mid to late January) of whatever group you work in. Raises are sparse. They are distributed via boxscore and thhere's a max allotment for each org. You can see how this might work better for some and not others. The idea is to keep everyone at top performance, but it eventually serves to piss some people off and send them to Goog or bounce around the company until they burn out from starting over. Some employees choose to leave Msft and return shortly after to another role to renegotiate comp. Stupid, yes. Worked for me both times.