Microsoft reviews

It's a very "click" type of environment. Either you are in or out. And the club that you want to be "in" with is management. Your performance will get you promoted slowly. But it seems to me the ones who are "in" move up a lot faster.

The schedule of meetings with no objective followed by post-mortem meetings with the same objective which resulted in the spawning of even more meetings with a similar agenda. The review/compensation model needed some tweaking . Don't negotiate level, negotiate salary. It was essentially better to come in under-leveled but at the pay you expected and out-perform expectations of you, resulting in a bigger performance bonus and a potential promotion which would then likely include a raise. Sadly, industry hires that came in appropriately leveled (salary commensurate with skills) would then be calibrated against everyone else at that level regardless of their tenure almost guaranteeing a less than stellar performance based on expectations of everyone at that level. To make matters more confounding, unless you're drawing negative attention you probably won't know you're not fully hitting expectations until review and then it's too late. Oh, and the parking