Pros
Most people are great and it was a positive environment, never had any issues with my team on a day to day basis.
Cons
-Compensation was way below market averages unless you worked a lot of overtime. While you get a generous amount of PTO, the benefits were average, and commuter benefits were practically non existent as well (e.g. parking or gas stipend). -High turnover. As a result of low compensation, people were constantly leaving, causing teams to be short staffed continuously. This happened to my team and many other teams in my department. -Long hours. As a result of being short staffed, the hours were terrible. The OT pay was nice (1.5x), but working 50-60 hour weeks to only make the market average was not worth it. -Work flexibility was poor. While a lot of companies have moved to a hybrid environment as necessary, it felt forced at MS. My work could be done from home easily. I was personally less productive in office, but still was mandated to come in 3 times a week. In a world where you can easily find fully remote jobs and considering MS's shortcomings in the previously discussed items, this was not really acceptable to me. -Technology was extremely outdated. They didn't even give me a laptop when I had to work from home during COVID. You are expected to use your own computer. If that wasn't bad enough, the software we used was all very old, 32 bit, and applications constantly ran out of memory. This worsened productivity and caused more errors/problems. On top of that the technological tools I used were not transferable at all besides Excel; they need to use industry standards. -Difficulty in changing roles. I often heard it was possible to switch to a different team if you were interested in something else during my undergrad internship, but once I was hired on full time, it was clear that internal hiring is practically non existent. I never saw anyone successfully change roles, and it was never encouraged. However, when management felt like it they changed my role without me having any say. I liked my initial role and was moved, and was given a new manager twice. Seemed like internal changes only happened at management's discretion.