Microsoft Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Microsoft has some of the smartest people I have ever worked with. They have great technical challenges and I always had enough hardware and software resources to do my job.

Cons – The work culture is competitive to a fault. The forced stack-ranking causes behaviors that undermine a collaborative innovative environment. Every manager that tried to work around the system was replaced. Most employees move around the company regularly and engineers who try to become deep experts are penalized.

Advice to Senior Management – Eliminate stack ranking. Reward pure innovation. Invest in individuals growth and encourage deep expertise..

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Challenging and fast paced environment.

Cons – low value for time and career building potential

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of your old senior management 20 year plus, listen to your new younger employees, they will be the next generation and life blood of the company. Promote a culture of support and honor. Look at REI's corporate culture.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Fair to good pay, stable company, good benefits, especially if you have a family. Working at Microsoft affords you a middle to upper middle class lifestyle in a beautiful part of the country (Microsoft is based in the Pacific Northwest).

Cons – Corporate is quite political and based on a stack ranking where those who do not know you or your work are giving your compensation and reviews. This means that you're spending quite a bit time building and managing your "self brand" and managing those around you and especially above you. Those that can play politics well will do well, however it does not mean that the best ideas make its way to the top. It my belief that the main reason is that the company has a significant amount of bloat with layers upon layers of people who are trying to justify their role. This was not always the case - certainly not the case when I joined nearly 14 years ago (I was there for 11 years and left three years ago).

Advice to Senior Management – One word - LEAD.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good Salary
Nice location

The work that you do may not be super interesting, but it's nice to see that your work is actually used in a piece of software used by millions.

Cons – Many unfriendly team members
Strange work mentality

The work environment is very unfriendly. Even though you are in teams, everybody at Microsoft really looks out for themselves.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – As a software developer, one can always find interesting projects/technologies to work on. Although benefits have been cut a lot, it's still very competative compared to other companies.

Cons – Too much bureaucracy actually makes individual contributors less productive. Also, in past 10 years, the company has invested so much in mobile and search but the results are really unsatisfactory. Hope things will change little bit.

Advice to Senior Management – I don't understand why for every 6 ICs there is one lead whose job is basically going to meeting all day. The company can get rid all of them and still do well.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Beautiful campus
Flexible work policies are common
Free drinks
Smart people to work with
Great Health Care- but this is changing significantly in 2013

Cons – Review System- it has become more important to "manage your career" than create great products
Review System- Promotes back stabbing and an unhealthy, toxic work environment
Bloated software products that no longer delight the industry
Horrible software licensing system
Engineering "silos" of developer/test/program management which are ineffective and inefficient

I left Microsoft after 13 years. For the first 11 years, I received excellent performance evaluations. Then, when the review system changed, I suddenly found myself to be rated a poor performer- despite being the only person in my group to actually deliver a feature that shipped! Once you get a bad review, you are labeled as such and a comeback is extremely unlikely. I decided to leave before enduring more undeserved humiliation. I now work on open source software, and have replaced all of my windows based devices and software with open source, Apple, and Android equivalents. This turned out to be much easier than expected- leading me to realize that Microsoft is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Advice to Senior Management – Steve Ballmer should go
Review system should be revamped

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Benefits, Technology is top notch, smart people, the people you work with in general, compensation

Cons – Senior executive leadership, performance system, stack ranking, mandatory 5% attrition and an additional 10% of ruined careers, breeding a culture of mediocrity

Advice to Senior Management – Consider a change to the COO/CEO and remove the performance system that is leading to the complete fall of your culture. People are leaving and looking to leave and it is happening now.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good, smart people to work with.
Highly competitive environment.
Plenty of opportunity for advancement all over the world

Cons – Repeated illegal attacks on its own employees - Discrimination and Retaliation are common management practices
Violations of Title VII and the Fair Employment Housing Act
Dishonest HR department
Corruption still exists in many departments for financial crimes and antitrust violations

Advice to Senior Management – HR needs new leadership - social engineering experiment isn't working.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great people to work with, company has vast resources, work / life balance is acceptable

Cons – insular, internally focused, culture is one of complacency. Inept management all the way to the top, poor review system, one is judged by how well the political game is played, not by work done or accomplishments.

Advice to Senior Management – I have no faith or belief that any in my management chain knows what they are doing - time to shake it up at all levels.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Large, great pay and benefits

Cons – Losing the trust in your employees. Micromanagement is now the standard instead of trust.

Advice to Senior Management – When you hire Sr. people, trust they will do the job and if the numbers are there, let them run with their role.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company