Pros
Phenomenally great people, solid benefits, opportunities to work with innovative new products and experience most aspects of working for a start-up; really great and innovative products ...yet many fall flat or never lift off because of poor execution (see downsides); no question, having Microsoft on your resume still carries solid respect in the market.
Cons
- the culture is backwards because it was founded by a one of a kind genius that was both a great business man and technologist - unfortunately, the technologists still rule but most are under the dillusion that they possess the same business sense on the why and how of products and their markets, and the business and marketing experts across the company are denegrated to second class citizens. The result is a glut of products that are introduced to the market with an 'if we build it they will buy it' mentality, yet any half decent b-school would use the same approach as a series of case studies on what not to do. - the layers of management, particularly on the product development, is unacceptable and counterproductive. They require a minimum of 40 people - 30 of which are layered management and 10 that actually do any real coding - to start building anything. The result is enormous budgets and excessive timelines to deliver final product, and all the management overhead pushing back and forth to stretch out budgets and timelines but spending more effort to justify their existence rather than value add. Compare this to most nimble development houses today that can do great work with a fraction of the people, money and time. - the wealthy need to go - hords of senior management down to front-line managers that hit the jackpot during the 90's at microsoft are still there simply collecting a paycheck. Many (not all) should move on - voluntarily or not!! They are no longer hungry with a ravinous appetite to make great products to fill real market needs - which doesn't take a genius to know makes a great company. Just walk the halls at 8am or 6p and its a ghost town. Sure we're all for work-life-balance, but this assumes competitively great products are delivered on a timeline and budget that the market rewards from product adoption, consumer satisfaction to rising stock price to say the least. - the senior management is fat and happy with no real incentive to shake things up. When you get enormous bonuses regardless if you burn through cash and deliver shoddy work and can pass the buck around on who's to blame akin to members of congress, where's the incentive to change?! More bafoons continually get promoted simply because they know how to manage up with an 'its-all-about-me' philosophy, yet they should be axed based on their incompetence and inability to make the right decisions to deliver a solid product and cannot maintain a healthy team morale to save their life.