Wolf in Sheep's clothing ! - Principal Consultant Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
21 July 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some great fringe perks , decent package (not the best). Offices are very well equipped. Some great people to work with.

Cons

Management sucks ! Driven by the numbers game, people are secondary despite what management say. Enjoy the good times because one day you'll be at the bottom of the stack - review process stack ranks people and one year you'll have a bad year and its difficult to recover - better to leave. Its a pyramid and you're expected to keep moving on and up or you just fall off. The review system does not cater for solid consistent performers, you must keep on improving - management is so weak that it has to keep applying the same dumb system. Its also difficult to move around the company unless you near the top as they won't invest (take a risk) in you having to learn different skills. You can't get old and grey here - young and grey yes. If you're young and a bit idealistic (sorry guys!) then its the place for you, if you a hard nosed, sod the rest of you sort of person it will also work well. However, if you're incredibily old - say over 40!! , just want to do a solid job, consistently performing, then no way - you're deadwood as far MS is concerned. And its very Redmond centric. I could go on and on and on ! In summary - Its lean mean money making machine ! its a business - don't forget that.

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5.0
2 July 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Comfortable and well paid. Very good work life balance

Cons

Too slow, couldn't grow. Growth depended on the team you are in. Can't leave team until SWE II

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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