Microsoft Software Engineer (Software Developer II) reviews

Work outside the Redmond office is not valued as much, even if you produce more. Some teams and maybe entire orgs may have toxic culture (the remnants of Balmer era). This is being fixed but some parts are moving way too slowly.

Poor quality technology stack. Slow moving software & tools, but fast expectations. Poor quality talent within the organization. Medieval methods of retaining employees - too many team outings, too many hours of meetings per week, expectation to work 24 X 7, plus, hostile behavior by managers. They work only on legacy projects, since new projects are difficult to monetize. Projects are poorly implemented by their sub standard employees. Even non .NET technologies (like front end technologies) they use are at least 5 years behind the times. In other words, a perfect place to spoil career.