Pros: Hours were flexible; the manager did not micromanage; the coworkers were bright; the health insurance was excellent. If you are lucky (and very talented), you might get to work on something very interesting. The company is huge, and moving around from team to team can expose one to a variety of technologies.

Cons: Disclosure: I was working on a very old piece of software and had little exposure to some of the newer projects at MS. Furthermore, I found the weather unbearably gloomy (Seattle), which no doubt played a role in my overall dissatisfaction. Relatively few employees really get to contribute meaningfully; the rest are primarily engaged in useless work. The salary was relatively low. There was no feeling of passion of any kind in 80% of my coworkers. Internal "morale" meetings were a joke. There is an excessive focus on individual features as opposed to providing a cohesive user experience.

Pros: You typically stand at the frontline of technologies. You have relatively easy and direct access to the source code, spec, and the people who wrote that code. You can get information outsiders may not get. There are also a lot of training programs and knowledge sharing through various technical discussions. In one word, the best place to learn the Microsoft technology stack (of course). You get a chance to work with smarter people. You benefit from it by pushing yourself beyond your limits. Of course, you also have to work with mediocre ones as well. Great benefits package.

Cons: With the expansion, there's more and more bureaucracy and politics, and less and less innovation. Now there are plenty of people working on internal development and release processes, rules, and guidelines; way too many of them are invented. There are redundancies and waste of resources, both by developing them and time spent to learn and adjust to them. Every couple of years, there are definitely new internal tools and processes replacing old ones with no good reason. Now it is evident that to advance your career, you need to go with the managerial track, where senior technical people now spend time doing administrative work. Also, people good at the political game get promoted fast. People can argue this is inevitable to a big company, but no one can argue this is a good thing for a technical company.

Pros: - smart people in lots of places - very good benefits - good salary - career-wise it is clear where to go, not clear how to get there though

Cons: - Senior leadership of the company does not seem to know how to move beyond Windows/Office. - Many places in the company are very heavy on process. Process is actually celebrated as a great thing, sometimes to the point of losing sight that the only thing that matters is shipping great products. - Microsoft bubble: very inward-looking. Most people have low awareness of what happens in the rest of the world in terms of new technologies, platforms, languages, innovations, etc. It is true that Microsoft creates its own gravity field, but still. - Promotions, especially at senior levels, require a lot of political skill.