Pros: First, it has some great benefits. The Health Insurance is top-notch, and these days, that is really important. It also has a number of morale events. The campus is really good, especially with the latest additions. You will most probably have your own office. There are free Pop and Starbucks coffee. It is fairly easy to get equipment. The payment is good as well. In addition, depending on which division or team you land, you may find a great work environment that will allow you to do your best work and work with some great people, and have reasonable working hours.

Cons: As I said in the "pros" above, it all depends on which division or team you land at the Company. Different divisions or teams can vary widely in terms of working environment. You may land in a good place, as I said before. But you may land at some bad places, where the environment is almost hostile, and all interactions are very loaded. You may spend more time dealing with the inner politics of management and your co-workers than with actual work. It may also have rather unreasonable working hours and make your life quite stressful. Finally, even though employees are supposed to move between teams fairly easily, that may not always be the case, and you may see yourself stuck in a not-so-desirable situation.

Pros: The company still attracts and retains good engineering talent. The benefits program is outstanding. The company still has an extremely strong presence in the PC/desktop market. Very good compensation.

Cons: Microsoft is no longer seen as a "hot" place to work, so the concentration of top-flight engineering talent is less dense than it used to be. Senior management has shown confusion with its business strategy over the last decade, having difficulty shipping Vista and always playing catch-up with Google. Innovation is limited. The company is slow-moving and can take a long time to get anything interesting done. Size can be stifling.

Pros: There are truly brilliant people at Microsoft, and lots of passion in the air.

Cons: Review system politics. You survived the 99% cutoff rate of interviews and racked up lots of experience, shipped some products, patented ideas, added innovative features, saved the day, etc. But now you're in a rough patch at work and find yourself in the bottom 10-20% of the review pool due to "metrics" and personality issues, and you are headed for eviction. Perhaps you'd like the opportunity to interview with another team? You'd better interview with Google or Apple, because your internal record won't allow you to stay at Microsoft. And once you get one bad review, you bet you won't pull yourself out of the hole.