A Fear-based Culture Only Creates Professional Cowards. - Senior Lead Program Manager Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
17 Mar 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It could be an interesting company to work for as it still seems to attract talented and intelligent people, has market share and revenue enough to try new or disruptive products/services. But because the leadership of the company is feudal and constantly reverses itself, and the middle management is left to itself to create a Disney-sized theme park dedicated to "Lord of the Flies" style handling of their human chattel, none of the pros matter much.

Cons

Very little of the old company remained when I went back. The stock benefits are gone replaced with a partner level elitist group managing the company to maintain their own comfort rather than innovate or compete. Stock itself is meaningless, and the pay and benefits is marginal (both of which are not real reasons to join a company, but are part of the old myth of MS's wealth and prosperity, which is long gone.) Innovation is of course routinely suppressed and rejected. There are so many "cons" to list that this would be an entire compendium of books (for example book #22 would be "Harry Potter and the Abominable Review System that Keeps Wage Slaves in Their Place"). So I'll skip to the end: Microsoft refuses to change and keep with modernization of technology. Its hard to blame them, as IBM did the same thing with mainframes to maintain their market position and profit. In the future, you will see a time when MS executives are on the street trying to sell a CDROM, shrink-wrapped version of Windows 22/Office 2023 with the tag-line of "Its all we really understand how to make". And don't be drawn in by their lip-service to anything "cloud" or "online"...they'll revert back to shrink-wrapped product on 1.44 floppy disk given even the smallest chance trying to relive the "glory days" of their revenue heydays.

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5.0
22 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- excellent benefits - invests in long term of employees - not in forefront of tech but has always been a good follower - company reinvents itself. - established engineering processes - promotes career mobility within

Cons

- not the topmost in salary and compensation - work is not fast paced. Can get boring for those who like start up culture - some teams are full of team members who have worked in the same team and product for decades. Lacks innovation - company going through a lot of changes as they reinvent in the era of AI

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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