Pros: Best health benefits. Very flexible working hours and great work/life balance. Ability to change areas within the company as no other company... one year work in OS, another in SQL, and the next in Bing. Freedom to use whatever OS, tool, etc. you want (other companies are much stricter).

Cons: - Too centralized in the USA; not many opportunities for employees to work in other countries with compelling jobs. - Although everyone knows Microsoft will still be a strong company in 10 years, nobody knows if it will be like IBM, which is still strong but not close to what it was in the past. This reflects in your stock award value and future growth.

Pros: Good salary and perks, very generous insurances. Great teammates and collaboration. Great to learn new technologies and work on high-impact products.

Cons: The only real priority of this company is to deliver. Quality and work-life balance don't really count. As long as you deliver fast, you're highly regarded, even if this means introducing many important defects in prod. Don't try to invest in a solid codebase backed by test automation and good CI/CD practices. Don't think about code refactoring. Don't think about investing in good design. There is no place for all of that; you have to deliver fast! Oh, and you will also have to support tons of products you don't even have the time to learn and properly support.

Pros: Work-life balance is awesome.

Cons: Nothing. All good. Very nice organization.