Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-11-08
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Vast range of jobs, tasks, products & services provides lots of niches for software professionals.
Pros: There are still some truly great folks who work at MIcrosoft.  You can learn a lot from them.  The sheer diversity of products within the same company is hard to match: you can find exactly the right product on which you'd like to work. Many teams have really good work/life balance. You'll have the opportunity on many teams to see world-scale software being developed and maintained.
Cons: The review system is very discouraging: a large chunk of the employee base will get a dispiriting message every year and there's no real (economic) benefit to being on a high-performing team. 

Though large, Microsoft is insular when it comes to its own technologies and products.  It's hard to maintain or grow your skills outside of the MS ecosystem without a lot of isolated effort.

Huge legacy and installed user base size creates a lot of inertial that makes innovation harder.  This applies to both the products themselves and the processes/tools used to create them.