Microsoft reviews

4.0

77% would recommend to a friend

(53,699 total reviews)
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Satya Nadella

77% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Microsoft has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 53,699 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Microsoft employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

54K reviews
1.0
Sep 3, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The brand, decent benefits, access to latest MS Technologies and tools, some fairly smart engineers.

Cons

1. Too much politics, particularly in the Management chain. Some of GMs and Directors were known miserable frontline managers yet grew because they had the right connections and played their cards well. They are a disgrace to be called Leaders. They have only grown their equally incompetent managers into roles of responsibility. They have a free hand and misuse there powers regularly with no checks at all in place. All sorts of bias in place - regional, caste, language, diversity just to name a few. 2. Performance reviews have nothing to do with performance, they are only about having more managers on your side in the calibration and supporting lies they can tell. The Microsoft performance framework isn't bad in itself, with all companies having some sort of a curve. It's the local misuse which is disgusting. 3. HR function has no control to ensure fairness. Corp doesn't care either in spite of repeated value and ethics violations by these so called leaders and being repeatedly brought out through employee surveys 4. Limited career growth opportunities within and external due to support tag. Internal Job openings are opened later, people to be hired identified first. No respect within other MS orgs for GTSC employees. 5. Offer seems very rosy initially and the brand sells it. It's only once you're in and take a couple of years to understand the game being played in the background, do you wake up. By then you're rusted out and worthless compared to the industry. Only way to succeed is be like these people, back stab your peers, do little yet project lots, leave your ethics and values outside the door, have sugar daddies who matter on your side, etc. etc. 6. Biggest career limiting move you can make - join the IGTSC

2.0
Oct 19, 2023

UK Leadership bad - share price good

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working with smart and passionate people makes you smarter and a more driven employee and there are still some great people in the UK and HQ (Seattle) If you're early in career then Microsoft will give you a potential bump in pay but will definitely give exposure to great customers and products such as AI and cloud

Cons

The leadership in the UK, EMEA, and US, are in it for their share pay out at the end of the year, and the easiest way to do that is cut headcount / cost in Microsoft Q3 so the end of year balance sheet looks better - means you can can and quite often will lose you're job when you over achieve. UK specific but Clare Barclay (UK CEO) has thrown all of her teams and leadership under the bus to save her own job and so the culture is really bad. There has been a big move to get high earners off the payroll even though they are there because they deliver positively to the culture and the number. As a result teams now repeatedly miss their targets and bonus If you're experienced then come to Microsoft knowing its a stepping stone but also that your base is almost certainly a lot lower than the person youre replacing. T&E has been massively cut so limited travel and transport for team meetings, no travel to the US, and no UK Christmas party for the last 2 years to help the sub save money despite record profits

2.0
Jul 29, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

100% med insurance coverage for the whole family. Nice office if you use it. 401k 50% match.

Cons

There was so many talks about special Microsoft culture. I didn't notice anything special at all. Even in start ups I felt more comfortable and had better team spirit. Management is a mess in Microsoft. No one really understand scope of taks, everything should be done yesterday. Manager tries to push down provided estimates and add extra work during the sprint. There's no budget to bug fixes. As results nothing is done in time and all blames goes to engineers. I worked for small start up and I know what is real pressure when the future of the whole company depends on the release. So I know what is hard work and I get used to work overtime. But in MS it's even worse, mostly because you efforts isn't recognized. MS culture promises life work balance and management pretend that they support this balance, but there's no such balance at all. MS push you to work overtime constantly, it's normal to work 12h a day and even on weekends.

Viewing 73 - 75 of 53,699 Reviews

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