Microsoft

The opportunity to pursue your work interests outside your core job. Even if your job is to simply write the code for a single button in Excel, you can still follow other interests at Microsoft. You can find many opportunities to get outside of your box. There are so many different groups and so many different types of work to do at Microsoft that, if you can't find something to suit your interests or further your career, the problem is with you--not Microsoft. The benefits are also incredible, anything from deals with local retailers to gold-level membership with Fidelity.com and other services.

The primary downside of Microsoft is that a lot of the old-school people from the early days are still hanging on and not moving on or retiring. This limits the ability for talented people with new ideas from taking on senior positions.

One of the other downsides is that the jobs, whatever they are, aren't exciting in and of themselves. As an employee, however, you can take many different steps to expand your possibilities, challenges, and abilities.

Another downside of Microsoft is the review process. While heavily instrumented, the instrumentation is highly subjective, and I've never met a manager (or employee) that fully understands it.

Well, I think Microsoft is on the right track with cleaning up our image and making us not only more "cool" to home consumers but "reliable" to business consumers. We have a very long way to go still on being "hip" and resonating with the average consumer, though. I'd spend more time on user interface design for our products, so that all the great features in our existing software are more transparent and easy for you. Great software is only great if people can figure out how to use it. All software, even business software, should be "delightful."