Pros: Good pay. Some really good co-workers.

Cons: Really bad management. No idea how to lead or make any decisions. Really frustrating.

Pros: Great pay. Average benefits. Brilliant people to work with and learn from. Feels great to work on products that so many people use. It is possible to keep working on an open-source project you may contribute to, if you follow the appropriate process.

Cons: Culture is somewhat ignorant about and/or resistant to using tools everyone else in the world uses. Often choosing to build its own internal tool in-house that is either buggy, "special" in interface, or just outdated. Examples include: * Build tools * Source depot * Various test frameworks Working from home (from a fiber optic connection in Redmond!) is stunningly unreliable and inefficient, at least for general development work on a large codebase. Process to approve contributing to open source on your free time is relatively cumbersome.

Pros: Stable job, some smart people, lots of variety in products to work on. The internal process to move is straightforward. People are ethical.

Cons: Not optimized for growth. Too much focus on visibility and not on impact. Behaviors are rewarded as much or more as results.