Microsoft

While the amenities can't match Google or Facebook, overall the pay and benefits are superb, like most tech companies.

Despite the fall in reputation, it's still a major tech company that works on big things with big impact, and whose name still carries a lot of power. It also still has a lot of very smart people.

Under the right set of conditions, you can enjoy a really prosperous career here.

From an external perspective, they have good corporate ethics. It may not be relevant to the day-to-day work of employees as much, but it still deserves to be called out as a major pro.

They are starting to have some of the right ideas at the top, which was not always true in the past.

It will take several years to see how Satya Nadella performs as CEO, but the initial impression has been a positive one.

With a lot of major initiatives, you often have two groups: the talkers, who receive most of the hard power, set "best practices," and get support and recognition from management, and the doers, who often best execute on the vision despite a lack of support from both management and the talkers.

Your performance rating is too dependent on the quality of your manager.

Perception, not reality, dictates decision-making too much. Groupthink can also be a problem at times, which can seem collaborative but is actually detrimental to the culture, especially for unique individuals.

The stack ranking may be gone, but the new system has little transparency into how performance ratings are done. A lot of people have not noticed because they are THAT glad to see the stack ranking go.

Too many people leave the company, either voluntarily or involuntarily, on bad terms.

Under the right set of conditions, employees can experience stress at levels that are physically unhealthy.

Even when senior management has the right ideas and vision at the top, and they have the talent with the potential energy to execute, too often something goes wrong between the two, and that potential energy does not become kinetic energy.

Also, while "One Microsoft" is a good vision in theory, in practice it's so vaguely defined that it just becomes a buzzword used to lend support to the same set of ideas (and conflicts) that existed prior to "One Microsoft."

Finally, be more open to ideas and technologies from outside the company; not even "One Microsoft" will fix that.