Microsoft Software Development Engineer reviews

The promotion cycle was a bit slow. They still review their employees with a bell curve which leads to only a select few getting promotions and big bonuses (even though many people deserved them, the stack ranking only lets a certain number of people get promotions each year). I saw many of my colleagues leave before their signing bonus was up because of this.

The referral program has some constraints that may pull the company's leg. For example, we can't refer college graduates while almost all those SV startups can (they even do internal referrals for interns). The referral bonus is lower than the competitors.