Company: Microsoft
Date: 2012-03-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

For better or worse, it's everything I thought it'd be based on what I knew coming in.
Pros: Microsoft is a large company with great benefits and a lot of financial resources that enable it to take a very long term view of the market place.  In addition, the company invests a lot in its employees and provides countless training options and abilities to grow.  Beyond that the general work environment is quite collegial and people often invest time to get to know each other and build relationships outside of work.
Cons: While my current group is pretty solid, many of the partner teams we deal with have miss aligned incentives / goals and to be frank don't maintain as strict a hiring bar.  There are definitely mid-level managers here who are quite honestly some of the least competent people in their profession that I've ever had the displeasure of working with.  In addition, as a PM it's a little weird to be in an organization where the developers drive the bus rather than being the engine that powers it.  As a result, I often see our R&D organization make technology based decisions that are extremely short sited business decisions.