Pros: The company really cares about its employees. They offer great benefits, perks, and a great campus. The work-life balance is really good too. You get to work on products millions use, and if you love MS technologies... well, you are using/creating them.

Cons: If you are not a real fan of Microsoft technologies, consider yourself tied up; you won't work on anything else other than MS-specific technologies/environments. This makes sense from the "protect your own brand" point of view, but I found it really annoying to be closed off to great technologies you have access to in all other companies. (Let's say, to use Ruby/Python for a side team stats project, you will probably be looked at like a weird being.) That for sure makes you fall behind other engineers in the market, limiting your scope of development. The so-known calibration at the yearly performance review creates a working environment of "I won't help you because I don't want you to be above me," and I really felt that. I was even criticized for helping other teams in my organization because I should have given total priority to my team (it's not that I was not doing anything for my team, but I was the one that could help the other teams, and that also benefited us).

Pros: Work with smart people. Flexible work hours. Good salary and benefits. Good work-life balance. They supported me going back to school part-time to further my education. Lots of interesting products to work on.

Cons: Easily get pigeon-holed into doing the same thing. It's hard to move around and expand to new areas. There's a mixed bag of managers: some good, some bad. Performance reviews are few and far between. The end-of-year results, which determine bonus, salary, and promotions, did not always reflect the feedback I had received from my managers throughout the year.

Pros: - Windows 7++: Best OS in the world! They let you learn all about it. - Switching groups is easy and there are lots of options: - Search (Bing :( - Gaming (Xbox) - Cloud (Azure) - OS (Windows) - Mail (Hotmail :( - Apps (Office)

Cons: - Below average pay - Low bonus