Pros: Great work culture. Great, encouraging people.

Cons: Work-life balance is not there.

Pros: - Okay salary. - Nice offices. - Pockets of IT excellence, usually where someone technical has been promoted to MD level by accident.

Cons: - Absolutely atrocious development environment. Business units are commonly on better spec PCs for using Excel or Outlook than developers get for using heavyweight IDEs. - Windows XP. - 4GB RAM. That's right, 4. On a developer 'workstation', a.k.a the cheapest Dell box money can buy. - Everything is completely locked down, including developers' own PCs. The simplest tasks become an almighty chore involving multiple layers of non-value adding bureaucracy. - IT management is completely divorced from modern software engineering culture. MDs are typically smart, political, completely non-technical, and utterly unequipped to actively lead technical organizations. - Apps are typically supported by offshored/outsourced vendor teams of poorly trained staff. Devs, intended to be the last line of defense, end up being the first and only port of call for most issues. - High attrition rate for genuinely talented developers; good developers come in, try to change things, get frustrated when they can't, then move on. - If your manager is non-technical, it is a nightmare trying to get some decent tools to do your job. "Why do you need a ReSharper license? Jim does just fine without it." - MS has no idea what motivates developers. Everything revolves around comp and the bestowing of shiny titles. - Many MS developers have forgotten what is meant to motivate developers. Everything revolves around comp and the bestowing of shiny titles.

Pros: Got to learn the basics of working in a company as a junior.

Cons: It felt like it was too much for me, but I think it was because of my lack of skills.