Company: Microsoft
Date: 2011-03-16
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Wouldve been great except for bad managers and too much two-faced cutthroat tricks played by managers and HR.
Pros: Great name on resume
Benefits (though this changed in nov and employees now have to pay more for healthcare)
Training opportunities (if your manager approves and is willing to pay for it from his budget)
Cons: Too many TERRIBLE managers.
Lots of bias and favoritism: "Cuteness" helps a lot in getting ahead.
Policies support managers to hire and supervise their buddies, and this leads to a lot of backbiting, key work assigned to favorites and exclusion of non-buddies.
The HR reps are super-sneaky and never forthright or sincere. Despite having worked at many companies, the level of this is astounding and i wonder why. 
managers and HR connive a lot to rank and promote "buddies" and get rid of people different from them. With the bad managers, a lot of the time, diversity is just something to pay lipservice to. Ballmer is no different.