Pros: The company takes good care of its employees and pays them well.

Cons: Not all managers are good.

Pros: The biggest pro of the place is the stability. Microsoft is not likely to run out of cash any time soon. Resources are usually not an issue either, though they are not well managed.

Cons: The review system is insanely difficult to navigate and is based more on politics than actual performance. Work/life balance is non-existent, even though they claim it is there. It's typical to work 60-80 hour weeks. Management claims that it's possible to have a long career as an individual contributor, but it varies between groups.

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 Often choosing to build its own internal tool in-house that is either buggy, "special" in interface, or just outdated.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.