Microsoft does not care - Software Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Sep 4, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

High salary compared to industry standards on hire (note: this does not apply after a few years at the company).

Cons

You will consistently feel like you are being ground under the heel of a massive corporation and your managers cannot do anything as decisions from on high screw you over. Incredibly irresponsible employer who cares only about making money for themselves, not about making the world better. Nobody seems to know how promotions work. Your purpose is to make money for shareholders. This will be rammed down your throat. That means you'll often be encouraged to cut corners you don't feel comfortable cutting. Read your contract carefully. By signing it, you're waiving a lot of your rights under UK law (until you explicitly contact HR to have them re-instated). Pay rises will be consistently lower than inflation, meaning that you'll likely find after a few years that new hires make more than you do. They're currently all in on AI and if you don't believe in the technology, that's a problem for your career growth, You get told 'we don't have budget for that' a lot, even if it's just expensing £20 for travel to a location for business, which isn't really believable when they are allegedly one of the biggest companies in the world. This also applies to promotions and pay rises where you'll often be told 'you deserve more, but we don't have budget' (or words to that effect). It's a large tech company. That comes with the same level of 'laying off large sections of the company' and 'everybody gets an effective pay decrease except upper management who get a large bonus this year' and so on that is becoming more standard in the industry.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 30, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Love it you are surrounded with smart people and complex problem to solve

Cons

Lots of new features and roll outs happening hard to keep pace

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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