I would like to start out by saying this has been by far been the worst, most poorly handled, and longest (by a long shot) interview experience I've ever had to deal with.
It started out with a phone screen, the developer over the phone made me excited for the team I wanted to interview for. The talk was great. I moved onto the onsite after getting the news I did well over the phone and giving my initial recruiter total compensation expectancies as well as additional information.
The onsite went really well. All of the members of the team that I interviewed with, as well as other developers in the org, made me really want to come work there. Most of them seemed excited about their work and they all seemed like people I would want to work with.
Waiting to hear back took a couple of long weeks. I had no insight into what was going on behind the scenes. Some time later I received a phone call from my first (yes, first and honestly it may have been the second) recruiter saying that I "needed" to come in... onsite, and have another interview with a different hiring manager for a different team. I took another day off and did that.
This mainly consisted of telling me that my interview feedback was good, and that they would have openings in the near future and that they would want to extend an offer at that point, but I just needed to hold out and wait. He explained the team, which was something even more in my wheel house, which made me even more excited, this time knowing for sure that I would have an offer coming my way.
Another couple of weeks later, I receive an email from yet another new recruiter who didn't have any of the original information I had previously given my last recruiter. She wasn't even completely up to date on what teams I had interviewed with or what my story was. No big deal, I gave her all of the information, but clearly no communication from internal recruiters.
Eventually I was made an offer. In my opinion, knowing what other developers were being offered, it was a really low ball offer. I had explained I would actually be losing money with the offer they made me. The recruiter took the offer back to the hiring manager with my comments and a few days later contacted me saying she wanted to talk again about my offer.
She was very blunt when we finally got on the phone. She explained what she thinks she would have been able to do for me compensation wise, but said she had bad news. She told me they lost the head count and would be pulling the offer off the table, and that she was sorry.
I have since tried to contact my recruiter to see if their is possibly other teams within the org that could use my positive interview feedback for a hire, but she is no longer responding.
Ultimately, it's time to move on. This experience has made me question why I was even excited to work at Microsoft in the first place. If this is how awful the recruiting/budgeting and hiring process is, it makes me wonder what else is like this internally at Microsoft. All in all, just a terrible experience where I was a hot potato with very little insight and clarity into what was actually happening after being told I would receive an offer.
For what it's worth, Microsoft isn't actually offering as much as some other smaller companies. If money is something that is important to you, you'll be better off not dealing with this and looking elsewhere.
