Microsoft

Microsoft is a great place to work and learn large-scale production applications. The people are very nice and easy to get along with.

There are plenty of perks and activities to take up and get involved with the community. The company will take care of you and provide all it can to keep you happy. The longer you stay, the more money you will make.

The pace is slow, very slow depending on the team. You could be left twiddling your thumbs with very uninteresting work. Many people switch teams regularly to avoid stagnation. Challenging and fun work only seems to fall to a small number of "superstar" teams. If you are not one of them, you'll stagnate.

Try to make work interesting for employees and challenging. Recognition is good, but the promotion cycle is terribly slow. Many people leave just to get promotions.