Hi. Is Microsoft a good place to grow the programmer's skills ?

@pavelkolodin Microsoft the company? As in get a job there?

@ArtOfCode yes

@pavelkolodin an entry-level job, yes. A full top-level programmer, nope.

@ArtOfCode interesting opinion. What do you mean by "full top-level programmer" (the word "full" is not clear to me). Sorry i am not a native english speaker)

@pavelkolodin - any job at microsoft will open doors for you in the future

it looks very good on a resume

@pavelkolodin where are you in your career? Just getting started, mid-level, very senior?

@MonicaCellio I consider myself as almost a very senior :)

@AndreiROM but it is frustrating to me to care about job to have good look in CV...

@pavelkolodin - you can think of it as a stepping stone. That being said, you know what your professional objectives are, so you have to take the job which best fits your needs.

We can't really say if "Microsoft a good place to grow the programmer's skills" because it will depend on the position

any company has people who do important jobs, and people who do repetitive, boring jobs

Yup. I know a couple people who went to Microsoft right out of school and felt they really benefitted from it. But I don't know how much of that benefit you get if you already have your basic "working in a large software company on complex products" skills -- maybe yes, maybe no, probably depends a lot on the specifics. So it's something you want to probe with the group you're looking at.

I'd really like to work at Microsoft one day

I'm still pretty fresh out of school, so I've never felt like I'm good enough to apply

but I feel like the day is fast approaching when I'm gonna be taking a look at their Careers page :P

What's the harm in applying? Especially at a huge company like that, it's not likely that, if they reject you and you reapply five years later, anybody's going to remember you.

you make a good point

i guess my mindset has been that i should get better before i try applying there

recently I've come to confidently feel that I've moved from the junior dev end of the spectrum to "intermediate", so maybe that time is close at hand