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?!?!

Pros

Lots of hours and hard work but pay is good for Fargo, ND. Benefits are excellent. Most people are good to work with and friendly.

Cons

Staff is over-booked on their workloads. Job coordination between sites or locations is stressed. Communication between sites and locations is lacking.

Advice to Senior Management

Take notice on what your direct reports are telling you and listen.

Pros

Great benefits, good support from the immediate management team to balance work and personal life (this obviosuly varies from group to group), decent salary

Cons

Part of the a really big org., therefore not too much scope in rapid growth. Too much emphasis on superstars ending up in a vicious circle of them getting all the plum projects.

Advice to Senior Management

Grow the team as a while instead of just focussing on the superstars. Get a more focussed vision on which products/areas to focus on instead of pumping money into losing projects.

Pros

A great place to learn a lot and grow Very talented people to work with. Easy to move across business units and even among career tracks.

Cons

very big organization, brings with it the corporate politics, could feel lost if working on a project that is not of much relevance to business or industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Management does a great job of communicating the changes and motivating the team. However, at times the work culture gets very formal with the upper management, specially when projects go across business units. Would be good to have a more open door policy and flat organization model to gets things done and identifying roadblocks quickly, with less bureaucracy.

Pros

incredible resources, full of smart people, nice atmosphere, plenty of different career opportunities, huge portfolio of products, sustainable long-term business

Cons

the salad days are over, and the process for doing things is laborious; Microsoft gets in its own way a great deal of the time; trying too hard to be all things to all people so the USP is hard to nail and communicate to customers, too focused on reviews and leveling, too bureaucratic

Advice to Senior Management

shakeup management

Pros

great benefits, great location, and very resourceful for employees. opportunities to travel and get in contact with various people in the industry

Cons

competitive coworkers makes it a hostile working environment for poeple to enjoy work. too many departments resulting in the delay of projects

Advice to Senior Management

did not like virtual team environment and writing bi-annual performance review when it is not necessary - did not make the teams do any better

Pros

Great people to work along side, tons of resources to get the job done, competitive spirit among employees, good training opportunities

Cons

little growth except for the 1-2% that fly up the organization, not great people managers typically (not always, there are some), pay is okay, but have to leave to get any real pay increases (outside those 1-2%ers)

Advice to Senior Management

Not sure i have advice for the senior leaders, but for a company that puts so many resources to keep people around (great benefits for large families particularly) pay is not one of those things they keep up with which pushes them to leave

Pros

Having been 3 years since I left Microsoft after nearly 10 years of working there, and before that having a number of other IT jobs, I think I can better summarize my thoughts and experiences there.
For those that think they don't spend enough time managing people, e.g. performance, reviews, career - you couldn't be more wrong. I think they over do it. They spend sooooo much time on it - it creates a false hope (think Obama and "change - yes, we can"). Compared to other corporations, Microsoft spent tons of time and money on trying to make people happy in their jobs and careers. Problem is, you can please everyone and you can only do so much. I'd actually advise they try less and for employees to expect less - everyone would be happier.

Some of the best pay and benefits you can find.

Cons

Middle and Senior Management. Most are only looking out for themselves - nothing they say can be trusted.
They talk about work/life balance but the culture doesn't support if you want to move up. When I moved to area the neighborhood I bought in, 3 Microsoft couples were divorcing at same time.
After 10 years there, and 3 years post-Microsoft - I'm much happier I left. Same money, same job/role - but MUCH less pressure or time-wasting conversations/meetings with middle and senior managers who are just wasting your time.

Advice to Senior Management

Trim HR WAYYYYYYY DOWN. They are creating false hope with so many programs to improve morale its actually hurting morale.

Take more risks, especially with younger, lower-level staff. If you are going to compete with innovations from Apple, Google, etc. you have to move FASTER!

Pros

it is a good place to combine academia and industry experience. It gives you enough freedom to do what you would like and what you can achieve.

Cons

to work as intern, you may not get full opportunities at Microsoft as what can be given to their full time employee, no matter how well you do.

Advice to Senior Management

i believe interns are the most important resources at Microsoft research asia, so they'd better give them more opportunities to get more resources and promotion opportunities even they have not graduated.

Pros

Good benefits, flexible work arrangements and ability to underperform for an extended amount of time before the environment will purge underperformers.

Cons

dashboard driven organization. Windows Vista. you carry a lot of responsibility without any authoirty. Quota assignments change throughout the year.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers and Leaders at microsoft are B-Level talent, at best. They hire C-employees.