Cons outweigh pros for a healthy job satisfaction. - Anonymous employee Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Sep 22, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1) The company is full of really smart and talented people. 2) Some orgs within MS are better to deal with than others. 3) Satya Nadella seems fantastic and pioneering as the CEO. 4) Benefits are great.

Cons

1) There are a lot of bad managers (especially any orgs related to Windows/Bing Apps) and peer politics at workplace (most orgs). 2) Unreasonable layoffs and frequent reorgs in core engineering jobs. One org infamously laid off all new hires with < 1 year of MS experience. RIF's not based on performance is a moral dampener. 3) Review system is really bad. You should be reviewed for the primary job that you are hired to do, which includes quality, timely delivery, team building, good work ethics. But here, you need to show what they call as "impact", which is doing any unrelated project or talk or brown-bag, that makes you visible to the higher-ups. If you are not capable of doing this one thing, then no matter how qualified you are at your job, skills and experience, you will stay at the same level for years! Even though the "ratings" are removed, it's the same old stack-ranking review system with a fancy new name.

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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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