Once great company needs to slim down to thrive again. - Group Product Manager Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
13 Aug 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people challenge you. The projects have global impact. The benefits are unmatched. When you call anyone in any industry, they'll call you back. In some divisions you can enjoy the autonomy of an entrepreneur backed by the resources of a... well a Microsoft.

Cons

I spent 25% of my time trying to confirm that one of the other 50,000 employees wasn't working on the exact same project I was. I spent another 25% of my time using PowerPoint to convince execs that I should be allowed to do the job I was hired to do. I had 50% left to do email, meetings and the work I was hired to do - each of these three was a 40 hour work week so it required prioritization and expectation setting to have a life.

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5.0
5 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Learned a lot, plenty of team work opportunities

Cons

Internship could have been longer than 4 weeks

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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