Microsoft

A lot of smart people still work there.

Huge variety of products to work on, and internal movement is encouraged.

Benefits package is excellent.

Especially coming out of college, there are a lot of opportunities to learn and advance.

All of the above apply mostly to technical people (developers, mostly). If you're not a developer, the biggest pro is that MS will pay you for doing absolutely nothing.

• Senior management behaves stupidly, very consistently.
• MS is acquisition crazy, despite the fact that the acquisitions have never worked.
• The review process is increasingly arbitrary and random, as well as a huge waste of time. Employees and managers fill out extensive forms "documenting" their "performance", which are actively ignored. Usually, the review decisions are made before anything is submitted.
• MS is increasingly populated by useless people. Many organizations are so dominated by PMs that they are completely paralyzed. They have an unlimited number of people who can distract developers while only a limited supply of developers themselves.
• Marketing is way too large and way too influential.

Stop acquiring companies. Just stop.

Get rid of 95% of marketing. Focus on development; free developers to get work done.

Stop using the word "innovate". Innovation is not a requirement for success. Succeed instead. Classic MS is doing what the competition is doing, but better. If innovation helps, then innovate, but innovation is not a goal in and of itself.

The switchover in test to focus on SDETs is ridiculous. Instead of hiring people good at testing, mediocre developers are hired as testers and build an endless number of harnesses for running a dwindling supply of tests while they wait for a group to hire them as an SDE.

Have a big meeting for all partner-level managers about visions for the future, and fire everyone who shows up.

Stop assuming people on the outside are smart just because they're from the outside. Any level 60 dev knows that people you interview from industry are generally idiots. Get people like Russinovich, avoid people like Flake.