Software Test Engineer I - Software Test Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
3 Nov 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I was fortunate to get hired on to a project with a great team for a great project. There were lots of nice little perks like free snacks in addition to the company-wide free drinks, social events with food an beer, and occasionally meals were provided. Free parking is also a plus, even if it can be tough to find a spot on Microsoft Campus. The job itself was a great experience for me and I was allowed to be self driven. After learning the ropes I generally worked on my own, but if I needed help or didn't have the solution to a problem everyone on the team was more than happy to help. Overall it was a very positive environment. I especially enjoyed being able to work directly with people in the production and design teams, which made it easier when trying to understanding intended functionality of the product.

Cons

I was a contractor, which meant that I had far less job security and a rather sad excuse for benefits. No vacation pay, no sick pay, and the health benefits were a joke. I may have had a better impression of the overall experience if I hadn't been quite unceremoniously booted out the door with no two weeks of notice. Normally Microsoft has a general policy for contractors to work a certain amount of time before needing to take a 6 month hiatus before being allowed to return to the company. The contractors on this project however became assimilated into a greater part of the studio through some unclear and confusing policy which, we were told, meant an indefinite employment for "at least 3 years" and plenty of job opportunities to advance their career and even become FTE with Microsoft. Instead this turned out to be a bunch of bloated nonsense and after realizing that their budget was overblown, several people were quickly let go with no prior warnings.

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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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