Microsoft

Very intelligent people to work with. Management is very open in sharing information. Industry flagship.

Sweatshop and a grindhouse - A Dilbert-like performance review system

Very rigid promotion system. Internal vertical promotions are very uncommon and rare.

For instance, if you're a developer, it's highly unlikely you'll become a developer lead. What would usually happen is you'll be promoted salary-wise for exceptional work, and a manager would be hired externally or from another MS division.

It is expected that you would agree to a significant step back in your career. Most individual contributor positions (e.g., developers, testers, PMs) used to be managers and/or small business owners.

High differentiation between different functions leads to a lack of initiative and paralysis for important decisions. A typical example would be that sales and marketing are totally decoupled from the engineering units, resulting in engineers innovating for the sake of innovation rather than for market need.