Pros: Smart, nice people, challenging environment.

Cons: No feeling of security. All groups trying to downscale vendors.

Pros: Stable, benefits are (still, used to be even better) very good for people with families. Many projects the company is working on, so you can change things up without leaving the company.

Cons: The company is huge and has many old corporate culture pieces in place, making it hard to stand out as an individual contributor. The review system used to be very contradictory. It promoted collaboration and teamwork in words, while in fact pitting you against your peers. It has changed now, but it's too soon to tell if it's a new approach for real. Many things depend on your manager. Forget about work-life balance if you want to advance quicker than average. The more time you spend here, the more you get stuck with MS technologies, which doesn't help much when you try to find similar class employers outside of MS.

Pros: Microsoft used to be the kind of company where you could really excel with original thinking and hard work.

Cons: The company is moving in a direction in which they don't value the quality of their products. The focus has become 'ship, ship, ship; we'll fix bugs later,' but that doesn't happen.