All In for Mediocrity!! - Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
Sep 30, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Honestly, the main Pros for working at Microsoft have to do with the work life balance and the benefits. There's a good amount of drinking/joking on the job; which can actually be viewed as a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask (mostly good when done responsibly in my opinion). The people are generally pretty smart and fun to be around though there's waay too many who have become or just are complacent and lack the motivation to be better at their jobs.

Cons

Management is atrocious. Like others have pointed out, there are waay too many managers who don't actually even understand/possess the skills to do their jobs and effectively manage a team. The culture is egotistical in the sense that it promotes an "I" sort of mentality. Their is very little in terms of collaboration and promoting team success. The infrastructure is archaic and all over the place. Also, there is very little emphasis placed on employee growth and development.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- great culture - great work life balance - great coworkers

Cons

- feels too relaxed, no one takes the work super seriously - always comparing themselves to apple

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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