Company: Microsoft
Date: 2009-05-01
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Lots to exprience avaiable but you may give up more personal time.
Pros: Plenty of different things go on there.  From software products to Hardware products.  Along the HW products side, like the Xbox, there are full low level SW tasks for SW dev types to upper level design stuff (e.g., user interface,etc.) ... a full range where a person can learn and grow into.  Similar things with hardware designers.  Can work with state of the art CPUs and GPUs to low level controllers ... again a large space to pick work from.  Also exposure to products that are produced in the millions per year.  Not many places to work that provide the experience with things on that scale.
Cons: Although work/life balance is talked about a lot.  In reality, management is so poor in scheduling products, workers tend to always be behind and need to work extra hours to get done on time.