Company: Microsoft
Date: 2008-06-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

A mixed bag - fair pay, great benefits, good work/life balance, cut-throat internal competition, bumbling leadership
Pros: -There are lots of bright people working at MS. There is so much you can learn from others and you can generally count on the competence of your co-workers.
-The benefits are amazing, by far the best I have ever heard of. If you have a family, this is great. 
-The company is stable. Not much chance of it going out of business, leaving you without a job.
-There is a lot of support for MS in the Redmond area. 
-There are many perks, like the PRIME card given to all employees, which grants you access to huge discounts on many local products and services.
-You can go anywhere in the world and say you work for Microsoft and people will know what you are talking about.
-You get significant time off.
-Work/life balance is respected.
-Microsoft does a lot of things. If you want a change, you can always look elsewhere within the company.
-Free soda, milk, etc at work
-Individual offices
-A huge, beatuiful campus
-Internal interest groups for just about anything you enjoy doing
-A diverse, cosmopolitan work force
-Support for telecommuting, although generally you will lose productivity when doing so
Cons: -The company is too large, and there is too much inertia associated with heavyweight processes, and legacy maintainace. This makes the company slow to react and change directions.
-There is a huge amount of competition at MS. The few who shine brightest are rewarded well, but career advancement for the rest is a problem, even though in most other companies they would be stars.
-Moving within the company involves a tough interview process
-While there is grass-roots support for agile processes, management is clinging on to heavyweight processes for dear life
-The company as a whole is viewed negatively from the outside. This gets frustrating.
-Innovation is talked about a lot but rarely seen or actually encouraged.
-You have to wonder sometimes how certain senior executives have managed to hold on to their jobs after bungling it so many times.
-The review system inherently rewards individual stars rather than team players. 
-Compensation is fairly average