Good learnings but no respect for innovation - Software Development Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Feb 10, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- good benefits, good benefits, good benefits - time-off is flexible and good but that is because it is not a startup and no-one really has a fire burning under their arses. personally prefer driven people who drive hard and then after that play hard.

Cons

- innovation is stymied unless you have a degree to prove that you are capable of innovation. so if you are a phd you can innovate in your regular work hours and it is respected and time accounted for. if you are a masters, forget innovation during regular work hours, you will have to work extra hours for that and who wants to do that unless u are a crackhead scientist working for betterment of humanity. - compensation is pretty bad compared to the industry and prmotions and raises are subject to your manager fighting for you with the upper mgmt which wont happen if you get on the wrong side of your manager - say for personal reasons. so no concept of peer reviews holding any water.

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5.0
Jun 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

good team and good life balance

Cons

bad food and tratment .

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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