Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-07-21
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Wolf in Sheep's clothing !
Pros: Some great fringe perks , decent package (not the best). Offices are very well equipped.  Some great people to work with.
Cons: Management sucks ! Driven by the numbers game, people are secondary despite what management say.  Enjoy the good times because one day you'll be at the bottom of the stack - review process stack ranks people and one year you'll have a bad year and its difficult to recover - better to leave. 
Its a pyramid and you're expected to keep moving on and up or you just fall off. The review system does not cater for solid consistent performers, you must keep on improving - management is so weak that it has to keep applying the same dumb system. Its also difficult to move around the company unless you near the top as they won't invest (take a risk) in you having to learn different skills. 

You can't get old and grey here - young and grey yes. If you're young and a bit idealistic (sorry guys!) then its the place for you, if you a hard nosed, sod the rest of you sort of person it will also work well. However, if you're incredibily old - say over 40!! , just want to do a solid job, consistently performing, then no way - you're deadwood as far MS is concerned. 

And its very Redmond centric. I could go on and on and on !

In summary - Its lean mean money making machine ! its a business - don't forget that.