A mediocre company led by old school white men, with no ability to change - Communications Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
5 June 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you are above average, you will shine, since everyone is hardly at average in terms of talent and ambition, No engineer, no salesperson, no technical support has Microsoft as their first choice. There is no reason to join MSFT if you are top of the line as a professional. But if you can't make it to the Google's, the Amazons, the Spotify's, the fun start ups with high growth potential, you can shine at MSFT, if the grayness of it all doesn't kill you or permanently damage you.

Cons

The systems and processes at Microsoft have taken a life of their own. MSFT is a living example of how technology poorly applied does not empower people but actually hinders them to achieve their full potential. MSFT lacks common sense, lacks innovation. The leadership talks about diversity but its all straight white men which, worse of it all, have been at Microsoft FOR EVER, so they have no clue how to really apply culture change. They dont even know what an innovative culture looks like and that includes the poster boy, Satya, who is the most hierarchical, corporate of them all, despite his "family" story which has been totally overrated.

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5.0
12 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great benefits In federal, you can get a bonus for government clerances Good work culture Value based organization

Cons

lots of change lots of churn federal side does not align to commercial side work life balance is hard with "unlimited PTO"

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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