Love the generous charitable giving program, dislike the infighting and blackbox approach of how managers are selected
Pros
The ability to make career changes. In smaller companies a person can be pigeon holed into a given role whereas at Microsoft one can move from role to role, often across disciplines if one is able to show good results constantly. A big reason that I am proud to work at Microsoft is also the company’s commitment to supporting good causes, which includes generous 1:1 matching for charitable donations, and Microsoft even pays $17/hour to charities where the employees volunteers time. It makes me happy to know that a good portion of our profits goes to make the world a better place, even though for financial reasons I am not able to work directly in a charitable organization.
Cons
It is hard to figure out how to move from a individual contributor role to a management position. The first jump into management is the hardest and it seems like a good percentage of people make the leap through politics (who you know) vs. merits. Also, the promotion speed in the field is much slower than that of Redmond, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me.
