Company: Microsoft
Date: 2008-06-10
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current

Can one company be totally awesome and at the same time absolutely suck? Yeap. Microsoft.
Pros: * You get a chance to work on things that A LOT of people will use. You get to use new technologies and learn new things. 
* Work/Life balace is VERY important and people take it very seriously. While there is sometimes crunch time, almost nobody looks at you funny for wanting to go home and be with your family.
* I have found that excellence is HIGHLY rewarded and that management - from direct to upper really try to show you they appreciate you.
* While it has it's down-side, the quality that you ship is amazing - due to the insane amount of  testing, integration periods etc.
Cons: * We created Vista.
* Microsoft is not sexy. Whe we try to be sexy, it usually comes out retarded. We create as-high or higher quality products, overall, as other companies, but we are too business oriented and not enough consumer oriented.
* Our greatest advantage is also our disadvantage - the amount of legacy we have may give us an edge in some markets, but it also bogs us down when it comes to innovating.
* We give in to various organizations where we should be more keyed towards being pro-consumer. This has to do with DRM and other things which we spend way too much money and time on.
* We are slow to react when our company is in the lead. This costs us time and time again.