Your experience will vary between teams, but one thing that was consistent (for me, at least) is that most of my time was spent focusing on politics and processes. Though I had the opportunity to work on some popular products, the only way I could ever get my work done (according to expectations) is if I stayed late in the day (most of the time was spent in meetings, dealing with build processes, iterating specs with the team, answering literally hundreds of e-mails a day, helping test team troubleshoot issues) -- unfortunately, a lot of this does not really get accounted in your workload, and in those cases where it does, it's almost impossible to correctly estimate how long those things will take, since it relies on your entire team to work 100% efficiently. I believe work/life balance is actually possible here, but it's only at the expense of getting a positive review. Accountability is important, but most of the time, it felt like I was taking the blame (or being punished for) someone else's poor performance on the team. At the same time, you don't want to point fingers, because it makes you look equally bad. Really the only time I was happy was when I was working late to make everything seem like it was on schedule, or I was on a team with no slackers. Sometimes people would not hold up their end of the workload (say if they were more junior people in their role) and management would expect you to help them do their job, but would not properly account for this in the estimates.
Over time I eventually learned to manage these things better with politics. Yes, people who have worked in corporations already are familiar with this problem, but at Microsoft, the politics are significantly magnified. People are super smart here and are always trying to make their job easier and take advantage of people who are not as politically savvy. Therein lies the true problem. I eventually left Microsoft, since it felt like most of my time (almost 70%) was spent politicking and handling processes. Coupled with a decrease quality in the products (the gradual results of their work environment) and a lot of other, good people leaving the company. Microsoft seemed to be going downhill.
Though Enterprise and Azure have really taken off recently, I don't think it will be enough to compensate for the decline of Windows revenue in the end. Surface was an unfortunate flop, and Windows Phone + Bing are sucking money from the company. Xbox 360 was doing great when I left, but now even Xbox One is looking like a poor performer, which is really concerning for the company as a whole, when you combine these things together. Office and Azure are really the only areas left that see significant potential and though Office 365 has showed promise, its revenue is really not enough to make up for the loss in Office desktop sales that are surely to come with the decline of Windows desktops.
So please be careful. It's no surprise they had layoffs recently. Despite most of them being in the Nokia division (because of the Nokia merger) still a considerable chunk of few people in Redmond (even top performers) were simply laid off because of the group they happened to be in. They were forced to leave or re-interview for a new positions in the company (which really does not work in your favor when many others are also interviewing due to of the lay offs). A similar approach was used in 2009. It was devastating to morale. Coupled with the "layoffs continuing to happen over the course of the year" really would not recommend anybody apply to Microsoft at least until late 2015.
The company is undergoing significant changes though to make it self "more efficient." But it's too soon to tell what that really means. Some people suspect that this will be the people who exercised their work/life balance, while at the same time, they will like increase the number of foreign workers who are willing to work the really crazy hours.
None of this is encouraging. Luckily, these days there are much better place to work and have a good life balance.
So now is definitely *NOT* the time to consider Microsoft. Look elsewhere and maybe reconsider in late 2015 is my humble recommendation.
