Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-11-14
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Good, but definite golden handcuffs with benefits and salary
Pros: Even with changes to Benefits, still better than many out there
Work flexibility is HUGE - ability to work from home and/or adjust hours is a huge benefit
Compensation is high - don't believe people who have issues with comp there - when you add benefits/stock/bonus potential, the comp is strong in comparison to rest of Seattle market.
I was able to move into a new job and learn it from scratch fairly easily - if you're smart, you can do this well here.
Cons: Working cross org is next to impossible.  
Lots of people working really hard on things that they don't need to - because orgs don't talk, you can have teams working on the same thing, or driving work that will lead to low revenue.  It can be very frustrating for that reason.
The higher you move up in HR, the more political it gets - more about show than actual work.  
SMSG HR is all about scorecards and extremely large powerpoint presentations.