Company: Microsoft
Date: 2009-04-18
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

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Pros: Variety, benefits, innovation ability in a lot of different areas. If you are a computer geek, here is like being in a candystore for a six year-old.
There are lots of opportunities if you keep your eyes open, but the first and foremost skill that you need to develop for your career is the ability to build the classing large corporation "street smarts".
In every large entity your network, who you know and whose protege you are counts. Microsoft is no exception. There are still lots of opportunities for pure software geniuses, but some minimum amount of human interaction ability is required.
Cons: Large corporation, politics, Peter's principle at work. On average, management is remakably competent for a company this large. Unfortunately there are glaring exceptions, in particular in areas that grow too fast, have been considered non-strategic for some time or are full of managers that came in from acquisitions and did not quite get how things work around here. 
Another problem (which is looked at from the other side one huge asset) is that the company is so large that it behaves like a hodge podge of independent companies. Sometimes it is the personality of the exec, not the strategy of the product or the value of the idea that matters.