Oh wow I used to work really closely with that team! PPT is a leader in Office in terms of engineering. I'm a big fan boy, no doubt, but it's easily one of the best pieces of desktop software out there. The team was really easy to work with and had plenty of senior engineers (incl Ash, Ryan) with a long history in the product proving guidance and staying open to change. A very healthy team. Happy to talk in more depth.
SPO guy here... Office has a wide range of qualities, all in the lower end of the eng scale as expected from people maintaining 30yo code. Working with many of them I'd rank them PPT>Word>Excel. In addition, their web teams usually suck like they are slowly building the less qualified brother of the desktop app. I've worked with word and Excel online, both suck although the Excel online team sucked more.
I know that team very well. It’s a great team some really good engineers. Ash himself is a great engineer. The challenge is the inherent Office product team culture which is slow and not much scope to change things. If you can get in some really good teams in Azure try that but on a scale of 5(1 being the best) I will rate that team as 2.
What are good Azure teams in bay area?
I’m not aware of any in Bay Area but there are some good teams in Redmond.