Pros: Microsoft, as a company, has a lot of respect for its employees. Microsoft invests long-term in a problem space and aggressively pursues its competitors, often winning by constantly pushing forward and surpassing the competition when the competition starts to make mistakes.

Cons: The political nature of a large juggernaut like Microsoft can lead to high levels of frustration for someone used to working on small teams and pivoting quickly. The business is set to compete long term and is not particularly innovative. Lots of innovation happens at Microsoft, but Microsoft is rarely the first to productize that innovation.

Pros: People are insanely smart, some of them legendary. There is virtually no limit in terms of learning opportunities, professional growth, and career advancement. Everyone gets their own office! Benefits are some of the best in the industry, period.

Cons: - Performance review used to be based on stack ranking and fixed curve. - Skill sets may become irrelevant if not actively kept up with the industry.

Pros: My career was spent entirely within the Office organization, so all comments here reflect that experience. * Opportunity to work with a vast array of technologies and types of development (mobile, desktop, enterprise, services) * Decent salary with great benefits * Company is stable with tons of resources to take big risks * Flexible work schedule

Cons: My career was spent entirely within the Office organization, so all comments here reflect that experience. * Depending on work from a partner team can be risky, especially if the partner team is in a different division. For example, if the other division has a substantial re-org, the work you were counting on may no longer be a priority. * Performance assessment sometimes reduces to a nebulous "level of impact and influence." * Shipped products will be deprecated or changed to something incompatible without a good path to an alternative. This is especially problematic for customers but can be demoralizing for employees as well.