Microsoft

Good benefits like health care, 401k matching, donation matching, access to counseling service, etc.

Microsoft is entrenched in a wide range of markets from office productivity, gaming, search, mixed reality, etc.

Can find coworkers with a wide range of interests and hobbies outside of work, such as sports and gaming. Lots of internal mailing lists for different hobbies to facilitate meetups and community building.

Creative outlets in the form of yearly hackathons and The Garage, an independent group inside Microsoft that coordinates smaller hackathons and guest speakers relevant for certain topics such as game development and virtual reality.

Good place to retire or to jump start your resume.

Your overall experience at Microsoft is very team dependent, with some organizations' actions contradicting the values set by the company's mission statement. This manifests in poor cross-team communication, misalignment of interests between teams, and tribalism. This leads to a poor collaborative culture where every team acts only in the best interests of their own team, and not for the company as a whole. How can you empower every person and every organization in the world if you can't even empower your own employees?

Compensation is not as competitive as other FAANG companies. While Microsoft comp is still very good compared to most non-FAANG companies, this signals that Microsoft is not willing to take the initiative to be competitive with their main competitors. What ends up happening is that the best talent ends up leaving for greener pastures and all the mediocre ones stay, causing a "brain drain" where engineering standards steadily decrease. Microsoft is not interested in retaining its best talents contrary to their claims.

It is much easier to interview external companies than it is to switch to a different organization. If you want to transfer to a different organization within Microsoft (say, from Windows to Xbox), you have to apply to a job posting created by the organization of interest and go through an interview loop as if you're an external applicant. Assuming they even read your application, you being a Microsoft employee gives you no advantage as the loop does not take into account your positive Connects, manager testimonials, etc. I've made more progress in a few months' worth of external interviewing than I did trying to transfer internally for years. Yes, Microsoft is entrenched in various markets, but you most likely won't be able to enter most of them unless if you boomerang or have insider connections (which is outside of your control). Again, Microsoft is not interested in retaining talent despite Microsoft selling you on the idea that they want to keep and cultivate talent.

Work-life balance is a hit or miss depending on several variables such as team dynamics, your seniority level, and the quality of your team's engineering processes. In my team, engineers are put in on-call rotations with little to no training in the product area, poor organization of information, and not being taught to take initiative in solving problems. This leaves the most senior, competent, and knowledgeable engineers being put on 24/7 virtual on-call where they can get pinged/paged/called/etc during off hours by engineers that are officially on-call but couldn't/wouldn't find relevant information themselves. I've even been texted several times to come online and help with an issue, WHILE I WAS ON VACATION!

Furthermore, if you're perceived as a competent engineer, expect to be stretched thin with increased responsibilities but little to no resources to deliver on said responsibilities. This leads to competent engineers burning out while the mediocre ones are able to coast by. Even when brought up in one-on-ones, the issue was dismissed with a nonchalant "we tried but we can't fix it" response. It's almost as if Microsoft rewards mediocrity more than competency. There is an ongoing myth about Microsoft being the pinnacle of work-life balance, but I find that it's mostly true if you're junior or are unmotivated.

Microsoft claims to be customer-obsessed and seeks to offer a delightful customer experience, but my experiences with seeing poor development practices and seeing products fail the most basic use cases (implying a lack of quality testing) lead me to believe this is just another buzzword. Microsoft is more concerned about crossing off checkmarks and delivering fast rather than being honest about their products and taking corrective action. This leads to technical debt, loss of morale, and burnout.

On a slightly unrelated note, even during my tenure at Microsoft, I've favored competing products over Microsoft's counterparts. I'll use Google Docs over Word any day, Dropbox over OneDrive, and I ended up selling my Xbox One but kept my PS4. I'm not familiar with the teams behind those products, but based on my experiences here, I wouldn't be surprised if their lack of quality translated to my dissatisfaction with those products.

tl;dr Your mileage may vary at Microsoft as each team is different, so be prepared to jump ship if your working conditions don't line up with their promises and your own expectations. I recommend Microsoft as either a resume booster or as a place to retire.

If you truly believe in the company's values, such as customer obsession, cultivating talent, and a growth mindset, walk the talk. Don't just talk the talk. Otherwise, employees who actually practice those values will leave for your competitors.