My main criticism is that it is not a company that values women in the workplace. I have not observed women getting promoted and women from technical fields are rarely being hired. Teams remain disproportionately male even compared to recent statistics from Google and other competitors. Little effort is made to proactively recruit women in technical positions. Managers from my division regularly and openly discredit women. They bully them (from my personal experience). It feels like Anchorman over there. The maternity/parental benefits are BS. I took them and it cost me a poor review (I was doing great before and in all prior reviews).
If you are in my situation, know that a lot of tech companies are proactively hiring women, publishing their statistics as cause for change, and rewarding women for their good technical work. The underlying belief in other companies is that women have equal capacity to be technical and do technical work. This is not the case at Microsoft. Credit is frequently given to male co-workers on the basis of their arrogance and posture. The presumption is that technical contributions in collaborations come from men. This is promoted by managers at many levels. For instance, women are frequently required to justify more of the technical claims on patents then their male counterparts on similar patents. The presumed inequality is part of everyday engagements.
Real equal opportunity teams may exist in the company. Just be sure to interview your future Microsoft colleagues and understand the culture you are going into. I have excellent offers in other places now, and I am taking the one that best fits my personality and values. I know I will have a great impact there. I just wished I had moved out sooner from an environment that was toxic for my health.
There is no collaboration possible, and unless you are a very vocal person and snarky to a fault, more arrogant people steal the credit for your work. I have struggled with this lack of collaboration and very competitive atmosphere. I was hoping that with the Nokia integration, a more collaborative culture would influence Microsoft leaders, but unfortunately it did not happen and all of those guys got fired anyway.
Regarding the interview process, the recruiter really tries to lowball you compared to other companies. This was my experience interviewing initially and then later interviewing internally. Crap tactics like acting baffled and surprised at basic packages offered by many of their competitor companies are the norm. Can they understand more collaborative techniques and work together on a good package? They do not reward PhDs. They do not reward the caliber of the institution you're coming from. It is because most of the management lack graduate education and believe education is useless (I heard it many times at work).
A minor thing, no free food, and food becomes quite expensive if you have only 20minutes to eat and need to eat in the local expensive cafeteria in the Commons (about 10-15$ a lunch). Something to budget.
The culture is really engraved in every manager who has been there from the start. Of course, you can find an excellent team (it does exist!) and if the work is a good fit, go for it. Be sure to probe the team's culture and get to know who will be your skip level.
