Microsoft

Nice offices.

Nice beverage and food support.

If you're a drinker, you can have alcohol in your office, and social meetings have beer and wine.

Coworkers are productive. Any personality conflicts are handled with minimal drama by a protocol.

Very diverse staff. Lots of women and people from all over the world. There were 3 women and people from at least 4 countries on my team of 10. In my building, there was a guy that wore a kilt every day. This atmosphere breeds acceptance.

Every software developer (SDE) has a tester (SDET). If you like well-defined roles, this is your place.

Guidelines for software style are strict and tested before check-ins, which makes for very readable code.

People are there to make money and/or to have the prestige of working at Microsoft.

I prefer to work with people who like what they do more than they care about money or prestige.

They have a ranking system to determine end-of-year bonuses that ranks everyone, regardless of job, against each other. This means you need to do your own PR, answering (not kidding) over a hundred emails a day and taking every opportunity to say what you did and what you know.

This also means people are professional but not quite as willing to help as when working in a smaller company or in a university environment.

All the emails mean less time for productive work.

These are reasons I turned down a full-time job there at the end of my contract.

The work experience varies by team.

Take on some of the burden of PR for the SDEs and SDETs so they can create better products.