Premier Field Engineer role - Stay Away - Senior Premier Field Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
24 Sept 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The actual work with the customers is rewarding. There are opportunities to develop pretty much any technical skill you could dream of.

Cons

Management - the review system was recently replaced. While the prior review system was bad the new one is worse. Microsoft can not set to limit itself to objective criteria metrics like utilization, labor logging, case wellness, etc. These metric are set as goals, but would be ignored if the management wanted to. They will absolutely reward someone they think has "potential" even if they arent doing their core job. If a GM wants someone gone, no amount of work product or impact will be considered. All achievements will be minimized. There is a heavy favoritism system in place. In both review models, feedback was either sparse or non-existent. Managers aren't really "managing". Managers just recently were instructed to provide feedback in 1 on 1s. Dedicated PFE's are pretty much considered the bottom feeders in the organization. The work/life balance is terrible because of the uncertainty/lack of feedback. To make things worse, managers wont give you an example of work being done by "successful" PFEs, or suggest mentors. There are a lot of parasites in the organization that steal/rebrand other work as their own. The sycophants are running amok in public sector/fed civ and NSG. Good luck if you're a new hire off the street trying to make a name for yourself. They'll chew you up for 2-3 years until you leave. While there is a lot of training available, there is no time for it.

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5.0
7 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Interesting and varied work. Seasonality to the job allows for rest period

Cons

Less stability than there used to be makes people afraid to take risks

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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