Big company, big dreams - Senior Program Manager Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
14 June 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Microsoft is at its heart a startup that found itself having grown into a huge company. Every day you come to work, you'll be joining the smartest people in the world. If you like competition, you'll find it here - the system is set up to encourage competition between employees, managers, teams, and groups. Benefits, flex work, and time off are industry leading. Also, the company gives huge amounts of money to nonprofits and should really do more to get credit for all the work they do in this space.

Cons

The competitive nature of the work environment isn't for everyone. Also, benefits are going through a long term redesign which is resulting in a reduction of benefits/increase in costs for employees. Morale is closely tied to product perception and success in the marketplace, and with MS losing its grip on consumers morale has taken a hit.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

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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