Pros: I was an SDET intern in the Boston office, which is a beautiful building overlooking the Charles. The full-time employees were friendly and helpful, including providing a training "boot camp" week at the beginning of the summer.

Cons: I wasn't thrilled by the content of the work on the sustainable engineering team, though I recognize it's an important part of Microsoft's business.

Pros: Good pay and benefits. Good brand name. Ability to work on cutting-edge consumer products before they are released in the market.

Cons: Highly political work environment. After working for over a year, you will realize that brilliance alone won't get you to the next level. Managers highly advocate the concept of independent work rather than teamwork. I've had one manager asking other team members to not help me in my work so that I start working independently (really ??). Bad performance review system - Stack ranking is fine, but there is a concept of being visible across teams. Doing well and exceeding expectations in your team isn't enough. You need to be able to impress managers in other teams to get a better rating/promotions during annual performance calibrations. Very high turnover (in this office specifically) - Mainly due to the internal politics and the review system. The other thing is management will make you work those extra hours when people leave or when other teams lose resources. But don't expect to get rewarded for working those extra hours. Those activities do not fall in the category of being visible across other teams. Work/life balance - Management keeps discussing this every year during the MS Polls if the results are bad. I haven't seen any concrete steps in this direction, at least until I worked there. Skill set development - If you are working as an SDET, it might be a bit difficult to develop skill sets which are marketable outside. Most of the tools/technologies used are internal to Microsoft and hardly any are used outside Microsoft, except C# / .NET. Underskilled managers - MS needs to do some work on hiring good managers. Some of them are just there based on the amount of years spent in the company and may not be good at coaching ICs. If you get a good manager, you might be in luck and may have a better experience working here.

Pros: Benefits are awesome, as well as the parties and swag. It could be a great learning environment.

Cons: Schedules are too tight to really enable you to learn something new. It's too difficult to get a promotion because you have to kiss the manager's butt and work well over 40 hours per week just to get your normal work done, let alone anything that would help you get a promotion.