Company: Microsoft
Date: 2013-01-23
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Know your criteria, constraints and career objectives before you commit.
Pros: Benefits, notably Insurance coverage
Learning resources, especially for those early in their career.
Cultural diversity
Cons: There are still differences in organizational culture from group to group inside of Microsoft. Unfortunately this healthy heterogeneity is disappearing, and the trend is movement in the wrong direction. Those groups that treat people with respect as individuals and team players versus commodities, that insist on transparency top, down and sideways, and that have strong, collaborative leadership founded on integrity - they are increasingly harder to find. 
For those groups that lack these characteristics, the annual performance review model is organizationally poisonous, damaging team cohesion, productivity, and employee morale. Team members are distracted from collaboratively delivering business value by necessary attention to political visibility. Problems and delivered solutions may be artificially inflated or worse, manufactured in the interest of management support at review time.
Performance management, employee recognition and rewards are all critical management accountabilities in any organization. However, these accountabilities are not best assured by forcing managers to fit their staff review results to a static distribution curve regardless of overall team talent. 
Careers can end quickly despite an employee's current and long term positive performance track record. If the manager relationship sours, or the employee expresses interest in moving elsewhere in the company, managers will often leverage that employee to fill the poor performance quota.
As risk tolerance falls, bureaucracy grows. The increasing administrative burden is further degrading conditions necessary to team agility, efficiency and innovation.