Microsoft reviews

The things that make Microsoft such a good fit for some make it extremely stressful for others. You will be expected to guide your own career and to be responsible for much of your own learning. This means that you'll probably always be reading up on something and will always feel a littel behind. You'll never acheive a comfort zone in terms of career growth. The environment is competetive, and laid back types who just want to "come in and do my job" will be limited in how far they can advance. Travel is required. Working with outsourcers overseas can be stressful and unrewarding because there is no mentoring relationship to speak of - you will be dealing with lowest common denominator individuals overseas who have no incentive to learn or better themselves because the people back in the States can always get them out of a bind. Support tends to be underfunded, and you will not have all of the benefits that people in the Redmond campus have (but you won't pay $500K for a shabby house an hour away from work, either).

lots of hours; sometimes lots of ambiguity; extremely matrixed environment so you have to be very adept at navigating and working cross-group; you're impacting millions of people so if you make a mistake it reverberates; the stock market doesn't value the company as well as it should, so your stock doesn't reflect what a great company it is; people love to Microsoft-bash - you'll need to grow a thick skin