Pros: I've liked Microsoft since my childhood.

Cons: From the very beginning, I felt very insecure here.

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.

Pros: There are lots of bright people working at MS. There is so much you can learn from others, and you can generally count on the competence of your co-workers. The benefits are amazing, by far the best I have ever heard of. If you have a family, this is great. The company is stable. Not much chance of it going out of business, leaving you without a job. There is a lot of support for MS in the Redmond area. There are many perks, like the PRIME card given to all employees, which grants you access to huge discounts on many local products and services. You can go anywhere in the world and say you work for Microsoft, and people will know what you are talking about. You get significant time off. Work/life balance is respected. Microsoft does a lot of things. If you want a change, you can always look elsewhere within the company. * Free soda, milk, etc., at work * Individual offices * A huge, beautiful campus * Internal interest groups for just about anything you enjoy doing * A diverse, cosmopolitan workforce * Support for telecommuting, although generally you will lose productivity when doing so

Cons: The company is too large, and there is too much inertia associated with heavyweight processes and legacy maintenance. This makes the company slow to react and change directions. There is a huge amount of competition at MS. The few who shine brightest are rewarded well, but career advancement for the rest is a problem, even though in most other companies they would be stars. Moving within the company involves a tough interview process. While there is grass-roots support for agile processes, management is clinging on to heavyweight processes for dear life. The company as a whole is viewed negatively from the outside. This gets frustrating. Innovation is talked about a lot but rarely seen or actually encouraged. You have to wonder sometimes how certain senior executives have managed to hold on to their jobs after bungling it so many times. The review system inherently rewards individual stars rather than team players. Compensation is fairly average.