Pros: Excellent benefits, pay, and work flexibility.

Cons: For the most part, it's a great company; however, work-life balance could be better.

Pros: Generally a good place to work. Emphasis on work/life balance. Some teams are great.

Cons: Can be slow career progression. A fair amount of technical debt. Experience is very team dependent – some are great and others are not.

Pros: Excellent Benefits - Healthcare support is excellent. I have gotten so many expensive procedures and tests done from the best doctors and not had to pay a single penny. It is also great for families for this very reason. Although most benefits will erode by 2013. Broad portfolio of products - If you get bored of working on office products, you can work on Xbox or Search (Bing) or developer tools (Visual Studio). Microsoft makes everything! Good support staff and facilities - Shuttle bus services, prime card discounts, etc., etc. Good innovative work in VERY SELECT groups. Just pray you get into one of them and never get re-orged out.

Cons: - Re-orgs I have been in this company for almost 3 years and switched teams twice, barely getting to write any code. Why? Because the group cannot decide its org structure, so it keeps re-orging, and the developers, as a result, never get to really *work* on stuff. I've noticed this in two different organizations: Servers & Tools and Bing. Re-orgs are killing employee morale, wasting company money, and serving no real purpose. - Too much bureaucracy I have to jump through hoops to switch to a different job within the same company. Ordering a freakin' book is a nightmare. - Bubble effect Most people are heavily soaked in the company "kool-aid" and don't realize that Microsoft products are slowly getting irrelevant in the market. Some people don't even have a clue about what competitive products are out there. People will have intellectually dishonest debates with you just to satiate their overinflated ego rather than understand what a hole the company is in. - Very low on creativity, very little originality. Everyone likes to do things in a certain way - it's like a government job. - Lot of politics at Principal and General Manager level. Sometimes, who speaks the loudest gets ahead. Although it's a truism in most places, it's sad to see this happen in a technical, facts-driven company. - There is SOME exciting work happening, but you need to be in the right place and pray to God that you don't get re-orged out.