Pros
- I joined Microsoft straight out of undergrad college as a software engineer in IT with a bunch of other college grads and I have met few of the smartest people I have known while at Microsoft! Especially the new college grads. They are super motivated, super techy, and politically smart. You will definitely learn a thing or two from everyone (and while this goes for every place you work at, Microsoft stands out for me personally) - There are lots of genuinely nice people here. Everyone is pretty transparent and honest, direct and challenging the status quo. - There are no meetings with just straight nods. Everyone has something useful to say and they would make a point to say it however radical, and you too will be expected to do so if you don't - A lot of parties, fun stuff. - Work - life balance. Your manager will literally want you to be happy. I have had about 6 managers in a span of 3 years and everyone of them was invested in getting me work where I could make and impact while also caring enough about what I do outside of work and whether I get enough time for it. - A lot of opportunities for innovation. Microsoft has a lot of internal groups and hackathons which promote this culture. And most of the crowd being into some side tech hobby or interest, they don't have to push a lot for participation here. There's a lot of cool stuff being built and you can literally be a part of it, everyone is just a ping away! - Compensation - Campus (its super beautiful) - Free snacks, coffee, and the like.
Cons
- Hard to get noticed unless you are super good at what you do. Every team has a lot of smart people. If they are not technically as smart, they would be in other aspects like communication, management. Its hard to stand out, and a lot of effort sometimes sadly goes into impactless work just for the sake of annual reviews. - You may feel like a tiny nut in a huge machinery. It takes a lot of passion for tech to give in the kind of work people give in spite of this - Being restricted in some ways to the Microsoft stack (while the company is justified doing this, you could wonder time and again whether the grass is greener on the other side :P)