Microsoft

Get to work on high-impact products with really smart people. There is a lot of professional development support available.

Lots of training, a well-equipped training facility, and smart people to learn from.

Lack of time to take the said training.

Your entire year revolves around performance reviews. You think about reviews all the time. You get done with an annual review, and it is suddenly time to set commitments for next year. Before you know it, it is time for a mid-year review and updating those commitments, and then it is annual review again.

In between, you have to fill out other forms related to ladder level and what not. All the time you spend on this is time spent away from doing real work.

Too many meetings.

Too many lousy managers.

Too much focus on visibility and such, not enough focus on your technical abilities. Who you know counts far more than what you know.

Get rid of bad management. Tone down the amount of time spent on reviews and review-related busywork. Allow technical people to grow on a technical ladder without all this nonsense related to visibility and cross-group collaboration. Don't make the manager solely responsible for an employee's performance review. This allows a bad manager to destroy the career of many an employee.