Company: Microsoft
Date: 2008-05-07
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: former

The best place in the world for a software developer to work in
Pros: There just is not other company like this in the world. You have the ability to do truly global, groundbreaking development work that will be deployed by thousands or millions of customers and make their daily life better or different. Also, the internal atmosphere in Microsoft Redmond is just incredible. You have the best of the best working with you, the atmosphere is relaxed, you do things and influence people based on what you know (not your title or who you know), information is shared liberally and you are part of an incredible team. However, there is no bitter fighting or competition amongst the peers, so I don't know what else to ask for. The environment is also very international and diverse, so you get to see how people around the world think. Very productive environment where you are pushed to do your very best and rewarded for it accordingly.
Cons: Opportunities for remote work are slim for SDEs and SDETs. Almost all of the product development happens in Redmond and if you can't live there, you're out of it (if you want to know why I no longer work at MS, this is the reason: I had to move out of the country for family reasons and did not find a way to continue my work with product teams and did not want to go back to the field). Also, you need to be a person that can manage your own time -- if you don't, you will get exhausted and be overworked. However, if you can manage that, you will be fine with 40-45 hour weeks in reasonable pressure. From what I have heard, teams can vary very much and (like in any large org) if you land under a poor manager, you are in trouble. Also, the MS field organization is a very different place and anything I say here does not apply for any of the subsidiaries (had some bad experience there)