A dream job that has exceeded my expectations and set me up from greatness. - Software Development Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
19 Oct 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I very rarely come across people I can't work with at Microsoft. Clearly, the hiring process is fairly thorough. I'm surrounded not only by highly intelligent people I can constantly learn from, but also by those with strong interpersonal skills as well. The educational opportunities alone are an amazing benefit just asking to be taken advantage of. Classes, books, journals, and mentorships with anyone in any org are just waiting for you to find them. Having just graduated, I'm used to getting in to campus at 8am and getting kicked out at 2am by the janitor. Here, I get griped at for even thinking of staying beyond 7pm. Everyone senior to me always has my back and is willing to give a hand in learning about Microsoft culture, growing as a programmer, general life skills, and how not to kill yourself.

Cons

In general things seem to move slowly. This is from the top all the way to the bottom. This is most likely due to and unsolvable by Microsoft having more than 90K employees. Further, there are many more planning and vision meetings than necessary to nail down a focus or a feature. This is true at the team, project, and org levels. Planning and verification are absolutely necessary, but not to the extent of obnoxiously slow development and response to bugs. In my opinion, there's too much "kool-aid" in the company. I understand people are passionate about our products and what we do, but there's a hypocrisy in teaching "avoid 'Not Invented Here' syndrome" while simultaneously challenging competitor products on purely emotional instead factual grounds. I also feel there's a significant level of hero worship which detracts from seeing superiors as actual coworkers and not as demigods among mortals.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
26 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

benefit and wlb are good

Cons

a lot of layoffs lately

4.0
28 Jan 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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