Microsoft

• Very good culture. Everyone is willing to help. It is more like a university, as it has so many students as interns.

• No office politics. Everyone learns from anyone.

• It is a famous place in terms of research in China. It is among the first research institutes that were established by US companies.

• Yet, it is fully independent to choose research directions and topics.

• Highly productive in NLP and CV research.

• You have many opportunities to see top researchers and great engineers. For example, Xiangyang Shen, Raj Reddy...

• Many fun activities. Interest clubs, events, food nearby...

The only con I could come up with is that sometimes it is more about research than engineering here in MSRA. If you don't like research at all, be careful.

Probably more on compensations?...