Microsoft: It's an experience, that's for sure. - Lead Program Manager Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
11 June 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Microsoft is a force-multiplier. When you build products, 100s of millions of people will be impacted by your work. It's a company that respects individuals -- benefits are great, people are encouraged to speak up. It's a large company with many smaller companies and cultures, which means that if you don't like your current group, or you want to try something different, you can move easily to something else. Microsoft is ambitious, which is exciting -- there is very little that the company does not think it can do successfully. No other company has efforts in as many diverse areas (from games and consoles to compilers to high-end computing to massively-scaled software services). As long as you have confidence in yourself and your abilities, you can do pretty much anything.

Cons

It's a large company, there is no getting away from that. You need to be comfortable with that, and refocus on the group around you. As noted above, there are many different groups, each with their own culture, meaning that some groups suck. You also need to learn how to be effective, which means that you need to take care of not just *what* you do, but also how that work is perceived to be valueable to the group as a whole. You can't just do whatever you want and expect that you'll be rewarded. This can lead to perverse situations where people who are good at managing up do better than those who are not, regardless of their skill (I've seen this at companies of 20 people too, so don't expect any different here). Things can move slowly. Microsoft has been many requirements on software development that smaller companies don't (legal, privacy, security, compatibility, etc), which can make it difficult to buid even the simplest feature. You need to learn a certain amount of patience and zen when working here. Microsoft's brand is not well respected in a number of spaces (primarily consumer). This can be soul-sucking: you work hard on something, and it's not received as well as a similar offering from Google or Apple.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

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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