[larsberg]

> I have friends who will be working at Microsoft, and other friends who criticize said 'Microsoft' friends, saying that they won't learn much.

There are many things to criticize about the dev experience at Microsoft, but that's definitely not one of them. Unless you're in a quite dysfunctional group, there is extensive early-career training and explicit mid- to late- career mentoring there that really distinguishes it from startups and other big companies. As a manager there, I was held responsible for growing my organization's devs much more explicitly and to a much further "minimum ceiling" career stage than I've seen or heard of from any peers at other companies or other places I've worked.

Of course, things may have changed since I left that position in ~2006.