Microsoft

Excellent Benefits - Healthcare support is excellent. I have gotten so many expensive procedures and tests done from the best doctors and not had to pay a single penny. It is also great for families for this very reason. Although most benefits will erode by 2013.

Broad portfolio of products - If you get bored of working on office products, you can work on Xbox or Search (Bing) or developer tools (Visual Studio). Microsoft makes everything!

Good support staff and facilities - Shuttle bus services, prime card discounts, etc., etc.

Good innovative work in VERY SELECT groups. Just pray you get into one of them and never get re-orged out.

• Re-orgs

I have been in this company for almost 3 years and switched teams twice, barely getting to write any code. Why? Because the group cannot decide its org structure, so it keeps re-orging, and the developers, as a result, never get to really work on stuff. I've noticed this in two different organizations: Servers & Tools and Bing. Re-orgs are killing employee morale, wasting company money, and serving no real purpose.

• Too much bureaucracy

I have to jump through hoops to switch to a different job within the same company. Ordering a freakin' book is a nightmare.

• Bubble effect

Most people are heavily soaked in the company "kool-aid" and don't realize that Microsoft products are slowly getting irrelevant in the market. Some people don't even have a clue about what competitive products are out there. People will have intellectually dishonest debates with you just to satiate their overinflated ego rather than understand what a hole the company is in.

• Very low on creativity, very little originality.

Everyone likes to do things in a certain way - it's like a government job.

• Lot of politics at Principal and General Manager level.

Sometimes, who speaks the loudest gets ahead. Although it's a truism in most places, it's sad to see this happen in a technical, facts-driven company.

• There is SOME exciting work happening, but you need to be in the right place and pray to God that you don't get re-orged out.

Stop re-orging! You are killing morale, disenchanting developers who go to Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and you are wasting your own money.

Cut the management hierarchy.

Fix your review process. The stack ranking model is creating unhealthy competition, which causes individuals to self-promote rather than the product. You have prima-donnas who will argue on some nitty-gritty technical detail to prove their superiority and earn brownie points. Bring in a peer review process!

Pay more – you are paying way below average. Ever seen what Amazon pays?

For God's sake, get some originality and get in tune with the market.