Run for your life! - Software Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
9 June 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

not even the high pay compensates for the Cons.

Cons

Employees who even suggest that women are capable, especially when they have their job review, can expect their job to be threatened. Of course it's done verbally behind closed doors and for seemingly unrelated or non-specific reasons, but it's there. The politeness you see around the company is a thin veneer over the sheer toxicity this company's management has. The company separates employees into three categories: college hires, industry hires, and internal transfers. Industry hires are people with experience outside of Microsoft since college. If you're of those then run! They'll treat you like crap. So many good engineers are pushed out of the company. Judge the CEO by what lower management acts on. It's not a pretty picture. Here is an indication of how toxic the work environment is: if you have more than 5 years of Microsoft experience on your resume, the industry will treat you like "damaged goods". You may not be employable after that. I'm getting out while there's still hope for me. Talk about DNI and "open door policies" are just lip service. Lower management is never required to act on it. They protect the status quo.

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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