Pros: Superb benefits. Very smart people. Access to the best technology. Reasonable salaries. Good for a steady job. Some teams support innovation and agile processes, but not all. There is a lot of freedom in the way you do your work. A lot of focus is there on keeping employees happy, which resulted in the recent overhaul of the review system.

Cons: Some teams have way too much process, which is slow to get to the consumer and slow to innovate because of ancient release methodologies. There is a lot of unnecessary re-organization because of changes to upper management, which causes flux to teams that are doing good work. There isn't a cohesive strategy within bigger teams because multiple senior-level people want to assert their ideas, which causes teams to get pulled in different directions over time. With the latest One Microsoft strategy, this is getting reduced, but we aren't there yet.

Pros: Great, unbeatable benefits covering most types that an employee would want. Plenty of perks: free drinks, great quality cafeterias all over every campus, etc. Though there's a feeling of being behind, there's also a strong sense of confidence that MS can once again come from behind to do well and even win.

Cons: Work-life balance was terrible, but it got much better in recent years. It is beginning to degrade again. Some teams and organizations have it much better than others; some are pretty terrible. There is a strong feeling around the company of being behind in technology. Building configuration is being changed from separate offices with several common gathering areas to large "open" areas of cubicles and general open areas for gathering amongst the cubicles.

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.