Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-05-04
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Not a bad place to work, if you can stand the bureaucracy
Pros: There is a lot of structure around promotions, compensation, and career growth that makes it basically impossible for really excellent people to be overlooked. If you have a halfway decent manager and you're doing an awesome job, it's almost impossible not to know what is required of you to make it to the next level, and what things will change when you get there.

Amazing health benefits (at the time that I worked there, at least). Some parts of the company have a pretty easy work/life balance. Getting the inside scoop on what is still one of the more interesting companies in the industry. Having the opportunity to work on software that touches millions or billions of people around the world.
Cons: It's a giant company, that is trying to have its finger in everything that's even a little bit interesting in tech. So everyone around you has different goals, different customers, a different vision for where the company should go. Lots of politics, LOTS of time spent in meetings, lots of doing things because someone several layers above you in management made a strategic decision (that may be completely undone by the next person in upper management to make a strategic decision). It's hard for me to imagine how a company of this size could be run better, but at the same time the smaller companies I've worked at have been far less frustrating workplaces.

Did I mention LOTS of meetings?