Bloated company believes its own hyper hype - Project Manager Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
Mar 22, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent medical insurance. Employee Stock Purchase Program.

Cons

Management talks about how they value transparency, but noone wants to hear the truth. It has become a place of corporate drudgery with layers and layers of ineffectual middle-managers who are so overly process-oriented that nothing substantial gets done. It's extremely hard to advance your career there. There is a good old boy network there that is too hard to break into. With the recent layoffs, there is a pallor hanging over those who are still there. Management has not been subtle in pointing out the people who are in the bottom 10% are the next ones to go. And yet everyone in the division is afraid for their job - even though they may not be affected in the next layoff, they might be in the one after that.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

good work life balance, culture and career growth

Cons

less compatitive salary compare to other big company

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".

2374
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All