Pros: World-famous software giants. Wide-deployed software products. Super-size development. Better benefits.

Cons: People there are too narrow-minded (they do not realize the outside world may provide better ideas sometimes). Management uses performance reviews as a tool to get rid of people, not as a way to help people grow. Smart people sometimes fight in a mean way for small pieces of promotion.

Pros: Benefits, community, and the opportunity to learn new technologies. It is all about software, and you work with really smart people. You have your own office. I am a woman, and I like that Microsoft partners with women's organizations.

Cons: Too political. If you want to have a career at Microsoft, you need to have a sponsor. It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do or how intelligent you are. It doesn't matter your reputation outside. You need to build a reputation inside and always have one or more sponsors. It is also a very competitive environment. They privilege competitiveness over collaboration, besides saying and "promoting" the contrary. That can become very stressful because you have to work really hard, and many of your peers will try to discredit you. That gets worse when the review period is closer. Microsoft also doesn't do a good job regarding diversity. I see it as a quite homogeneous ecosystem. In many of the groups (I won't say all because I only worked in a few), most employees are Indian males. The very few women are mostly Indian or Arabian, and they are usually shy and don't speak up (maybe that explains why there are so few senior women). I am a woman coming from a more liberal culture, and I really feel intimidated by this. Don't get me wrong; I don't have anything against any particular culture. It is just the lack of diversity that I don't like. I don't feel I have much in common with most of the people I work/worked with here.

Pros: Stability and respect for employees.

Cons: Growth is not amazing. Sometimes you feel getting things done is very bureaucratic.