Pros
Love the healthecare insurance, ride share, health club, legal, and other perks such as reimbursement offered for those really late nights on campus that last beyond public transportation. I have had to take a cab home a couple of times at 2:00am and was reimbursed 100%. I also like the speaker series that are very educational. There are eduacational reimbursment benefits as well but overal they are pretty light at 7K a year I think for an approved program at a local university and not sure how far 7K would go at the university of washington but it is something.
Cons
The secret society that exists between those that have been at Microsoft the longest. It is a tough click to crack. There is no clear roadmap to parnter and I honestly do not know of anyone from the outside that makes it from entry level now days to partner. There are far too many people in line that have been at microsoft forever what are waiting for those spots. And, the comp model does not promote teamwork. Instead it promotes hundereds of redundant teams, roles, and products all competing against eachother to the finish line. There is little rationalle behind who wins. It is a subjective process that looks objecive on paper but often the paper reviews actually do not match the true work that is delivered. Those who are new to the culture or are from the outside really get taken advantage of by the old timers. They speak two different languages and the old timers expect you to adapt or leave and sometimes adapting to their ways lacks business ethics. I personally have been asked on more than one occassion to do things like "fudge the numbers, make it up, etc" and when refused to do so diplomatically and carefully was then demoted and given a poor perforamnce reveiw despite winning several awards throughout the year that were an obvious contrast to what was in my review. One of the awards in fact was for Engineering Excellence for what of the best projects of the year awarded by Bill Gates so it was intersting to receive my fourth award that year and then on my review be told that I was in the bottom 10%. Previously to that year under other managers, I was always in the top 10% and on steve's "One to Watch List." Yup, there is a list - I'll bet a lot of you softy's did not know that. Things like this though happen all the time, you hear it everywhere and things never seem to change. Worse for wear thought is that if you take something like this to HR, they really have not ability to do anything except for an investigation that can make the indivudal emploee look bad, the repercussions cintinue against the employee and HR and the GM's with poor ethics continue on. In the end, I will leave due to the poor business ethics I have seen here as that is the beginning of the end for microsft when at this size and scale they have lost complete control og the emplyees, sr managers, and HR.