Microsoft

Great place to intern. I advise against pursuing as a full-time job over the long term.

Rewards, promotions, and reviews are political, not merit-based. More importantly, job satisfaction has hit rock-bottom because very few groups focus on building truly successful products. Most everyone else is following another manager's orders. Very disheartening.

The company lacks a well-defined direction. Most groups are too large, and organizations are too complex, so a lot of effort is being wasted. This hurts because the impact of your work ends up being fairly negligible. Too many times, when saving a project from ruin, you might contribute immensely, but it's not a feather in anyone's cap, and you won't receive credit for it.

Please make this a tight running ship with a clear, focused path towards increased revenue.

Honor good design. Pay utmost attention to usability and end-user satisfaction.

Stop jumping on the latest bandwagon and be very clear on what not to do.

Lastly, weed out the PM culture that impacts work, reduces the overall quality of your product, and simply wastes resources.

Your developers and designers have a lot of talent – listen to them. Everyone else in the group is a liability and is only slowing Microsoft's progress.

Then again, this advice may or may not be in line with your goal of a bigger promotion/paycheck/bonus.

It shows in the final product if a company is truly passionate about making something worthwhile. Learn from Apple.