Imagine the Kremlin, but with Termination Instead of Assassination - Senior Software Developer Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
Apr 28, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free coffee, drinks, excellent cafeterias The chance to have your work on millions of machines

Cons

The sense of repression and fear is intense. People who have every reason to believe they are in good standing are terminated for obscure reasons. Innovative ideas are regarded as challenges to authority. Most of all, the company is obsessed with standards and uniformity and the standards are useless, counterproductive, often idiotic. Coding standards for example require illegibility, prescribe incoherent and inefficient practices, and demand useless extra work e.g. Unit test cases for components where they are inapplicable. The innovative atmosphere of the late 1980s is completely gone. Where once people worked until 8:30 PM because they loved what they were doing, they now work until 11:30 because they're terrified of their next annual review. Strangers to their families, stressed, exhausted, with 20 hours of recurring meetings every week. Project planning is driven by competition between fiefdoms, and lurches from one bad idea to another.

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5.0
Jun 18, 2026
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CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

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Cons

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4.0
Jan 28, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. If you love tech, this is a great place. No doubt you'll talk tech (mostly the MSFT stack) from enterprise to consumer - from PCs to phones to Xboxes - from datacenter to desktop. 2. What were GREAT benefits are now VERY GOOD (took a small step down) but still probably better than you'll find at 99% of large corporations. If you've got family - the value of the benefits is even higher. 401k match is nice. 3. Even with it's struggles MSFT is still a cash printing machine. This means if you can keep your nose clean and do reasonable work, you can have a stable job, pay your bills, feed your family, and not worry (too much) about layoffs. The stock you own likely won't tank, but probably won't go up much either. You'll get a bonus each year and some stock. It's a decent life if you aren't looking to light the world on fire.

Cons

Brand on Your Resume: After many years of losing market share and struggling to be at the front end of innovation and the fact that there's 90,000 employees, don't think MSFT is necessarily going to be attractive on your resume to more agile and smaller companies. Managing Your Career: Make you say this out loud so it registers - 90,000 employees work there. Double that for vendors. It is VERY hard to "stand out" and move up in the company. Don't expect your manager to be much of an advocate or enabler to help you meet your career goals - they are basically trying to survive the stack rank every year too. Not familiar with the stack rank? Check out the 2012 Vanity Fair article called "Microsoft's Lost Decade".

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