Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-02-27
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Great place to learn how to really develop software
Pros: Microsoft is still relevant, and has great development processes, but do try to join an org who wholly adopts agile if that's your thing. I've seen both Scrum and waterfall done well. I've also seen a large org make the shift and they were quite successful.

There really is nothing like being at MSFT when your org is asked to create a new product. Its staggering what 250 engineers can do in short timeframes with high quality.

if you are early in your career, you'll get great experience here.

As the workforce has gentrified, work life balance has improved a lot.
Cons: New college hires do usually put in longer than average hours while competing tor promotions due to the stack rank. 

At higher levels, political savvy is extremely helpful to get promoted. Lots of cross group collaboration is needed to get others on your manager's side for the stack rank.