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: Each Microsoft team is like a small company with its own culture and values. They are brilliant people to work with.

Cons: The company lacked the broader vision, but that is changing with time.

Pros: College hires or junior employees will probably have 5 to 10 *good* years at Microsoft. If you're not on the "management track" or senior level by then, it will serve you best to move on to new things. By that time, the experience gained will help you to be more successful elsewhere. The most important thing you can learn here is how to make enterprise software scalable and best practices in engineering.

Cons: In many orgs, team dynamics are just bad. Too much bloat in process and personnel. The culture is highly dependent on email, even within teams sitting together in the same building. Many teams struggle to implement lean/agile effectively. About two-thirds of Program Managers seem to be clueless and do not have any real accountability. The middle management culture is risk-averse and has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The worst part is many of those middle managers float around the company, transferring from group to group without passion or fresh ideas. Because of that churn, in most orgs, there will be morale-killing and sometimes pointless re-orgs a couple times each year. Depending on your manager, you may periodically have some anxiety about Microsoft's notoriously Darwinian performance review system.