Microsoft – “Great pay and Benefits with no advancement. Good place for rest and vest types...”

Pros

Pay is really good if you've been there a while.
Benefits, vacation, sick time all generous.
Facility is outstanding.
Good opportunity to learn.

Cons

Politics are rampant in all groups
Lots of people collecting paychecks
Bullying wins over common sense
Advancement is limited unless you move to Redmond

Advice to Senior Management

Operations Management team -
Promote from within. The eBay management team took over and tried / failed at implementing a single architecture support org. Change doesn't happen overnight and you have to understand the group before you have yet another org change to cover up your blunders. Need a better model and get rid of the eBay groupies.

At higher levels don't base reviews on cross group collaboration when you choose what projects people work on. If you don't assign cross group projects you shouldn't be measured on this. Seems so obvious.

Product Development / QA / PM Management team -
You rock! Love the new structure QA / PM / DEV. Drives fast iterations and clear lines of ownership!

Microsoft Management -
Get better ways at evaluating employees. You have all this technology to understand metrics but don't apply this for employees performance. Divisional VP's seem out of the loop and middle managers are lost leaving IC's to wander. Get some accountability for the managers of managers and those commitments that you say are supposed to be open and passed around to be measured ... WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU FOLLOWED UP ON THESE?!?!