Program Manager II - Program Manager II Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
Jan 14, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work life balance! I don't need to do almost anything. I go to work at 11am, leave at 3pm, spending most of the time doing my own stuff. If you want to get retired, Welcome to Microsoft!

Cons

1. No Growth. After 3 years you wonder what you know after all when you talk with people from outside. And you are self-conscious what you can do if you are laid off. Perhaps nothing. 2. Debating Country Culture. So many employees from a specific country that is full of vendors, and those employees sometimes give me an illusion that I'm currently in that country. You understand what I mean. PMs from this country are so good at debating that they eat debating for a living. They bury you with debate in meetings that you are totally lost. 3. PM Managers and Directors. They are a joke. They shouldn't have existed. They are humiliating themselves. They are pure overhead that brings down the engineering team's morale. I seriously believe Microsoft will benefit from firing all PMs, but allowing PMs to convert to engineers if they can survive a high-school level coding test.

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5.0
Jul 6, 2026
Anonymous temporary employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great Company to work with.

Cons

Nothing I can think off

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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