Company: Microsoft
Date: 2015-11-19
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Can be an amazing place to work if you land in the right place
Pros: Pay and benefits are good - esp. if you negotiate well
Good work-life balance 
Career development & training are good
Depending on your team - highly flexible working
Casual / informal working environment - can be huge amounts of fun
The people are (on the whole) really great - you will work with likeable people
(In the UK at least) a truly diverse employer that really takes protecting its employees seriously
International business often with opportunities to travel 
Extraordinary flexibility to move within the organisation to different disciplines and learn new skills
Depending on your team and boss real opportunities to take on big responsibilities and work on great products
Cons: They were trying to tackle this when I left but there's too much internal competition and it gets in the way of business
Matrix organisation that doesn't alway incentivise collaboration across teams - but as above this may have changed
Microsoft has suffered huge market share decline across products and this can be demoralising
This is true of anywhere, but you need to make sure you land in the right place with the right boss and the right people around you. There are pockets of high politics which can be corrosive
If you go in too junior, you'll get stuck. In spite of Satya Nadella, it's hard to rise 
Business planning and forecasting processing often more about showboating than reality - again not always good for business