Microsoft

As an SDE, you are given a lot of freedom at Microsoft to design your feature from a technical perspective.

There isn't a lot of second-guessing, and you can use the tools you prefer for the most part.

Benefits are A-rate (although the $1500 limit on dental can be costly depending on your situation... but that is the only real limit).

There is a huge swath of products the company works on, and it's relatively easy to move around (18-month commitment per group).

Co-workers are generally top-notch; you can learn from them.

Open and constructively critical culture for the most part.

My main issue recently has been the rewards system. Basically, rewards are given out based on a stack rank system. A group of even 40 people must fit the curve, and every such group is basically given the exact same pool of money to start with.

The result is that, perversely, you really don't want to be a strong team because it's going to be more competitive.

There is no accountability for product failure in the market. Every level x SDE in the company is getting paid the same range, no matter what the status of their product. Every dev group (for example) is getting the same pool of rewards.

Work expectations in terms of both time and competencies are supposed to be standardized across the firm, but it isn't even close to equal. Recently my group interviewed a bunch of devs from another group whose project was finally cancelled (a rarity!) and none of them could make our hiring bar.

I'm starting to shop for the internally weakest group I can so that I can do less work for the same outcome. It's really quite stupid.

I think the company needs to get more aggressive and is being lazy in many respects. We are being schooled in multiple product areas that we were first to market. Take Windows Mobile for example... we had been doing it for 5+ years before iPhone came out, yet iPhone is clearly superior in almost every respect to our software. It's really embarrassing, yet we do not seem to be capable of doing anything about it. It's sapping morale... and more generally, to me it points to a problem. We keep adding more and more people, but somehow getting less and less done. The "less is more" crowd, who favor actually cutting the employee base to a more elite group, is gaining a lot of currency with me.