Microsoft Software Design Engineer reviews

4.4

85% would recommend to a friend

(33 total reviews)
avatar

Satya Nadella

100% approve of CEO

98% positive business outlook

Software Design Engineer || employees have rated Microsoft with 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on 33 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Design Engineer || professionals have an excellent working experience there. Microsoft is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Design Engineer || professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

33 reviews
3.0
Jul 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Top company. Good health benefits. Work life balance is good. Opportunity to work with some of the top people in the industry and learn a lot. Plenty of teams within and many interesting projects to work. Internal transfer between teams is allowed (compensation and level wont change even though you have the experience) so you can get a diverse experience (server side stuff, devices etc. ). As long as you have the skills you can also try out different roles like SDE, SDET, and PM. Some of the teams have excellent software engineering practices. It is easy to find rental accomodation closer to the company which is an upside for me. Great for junior and college hires.

Cons

Middle level candidates (4-6 years experience) usually dont get the compensation and level they deserve. Many times new college hires earn more than experienced candidates. When joining please do your homework and negotiate a proper level and compensation. Once you are in it is almost impossible to reach your expected level. Even though management says promotions are based on contributions and not based on the time served in the company in practice it is actually opposite. Yearly performance reviews are absolute waste of time. Many of the first level managers (leads) are horrible. They do not have the technical or management experience and experienced ICs have a hard time working for them. Not so nice weather in seattle area.

4.0
Jul 6, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. High-impact products with millions of customers. 2. Reasonable resource allocation. 3. Reasonably easy to find opportunities on different teams.

Cons

1. Process usually feels anti-agile. 2. Project management heavy and slow to respond to competition/opportunity. 3. Discipline-based silos make it difficult to collaborate as a team. 4. If you're not a "partner," you're a peon. Real classism. 5. Review process emphasizes competition with peers over team collaboration.

Viewing 28 - 30 of 33 Reviews

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