Microsoft Reviews

I worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Microsoft has some great technologies, great people, and great passion internally. The benefits are outstanding and overall compensation is very good. You have the opportunity to work on projects that will impact millions or potentially hundreds of millions of people.

Cons – Microsoft can't change it's corporate culture to deal with the 21st century. It moves too slow and is too insular from customers and what else is going on. There is quite a sense of entitlement among employees, especially those that have been there a long time. Both in terms of how they expect to work, but also very much a "if we build it, they will come" mentality.

I have been working at Microsoft full-time

Pros – Great minds all around you
Outstanding pay and benefits, which can sometimes be a worthwhile trade-off for work/life balance
Discounted product and service offerings
Onsite medical clinic

Cons – Senior leadership is not staying in touch with employee and technology market needs
Have seen a lot of great business leaders shown the door or leave for greener pastures

Advice to Senior Management – Time for change at the top and a return to leading edge development work in order to get their Mojo back

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

I worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Microsoft still has really good benefits, even though they have cut back in the last couple of years. There are a lot of really good people there, and good products to work on.

Cons – The stack ranking mechanism is devastating. No matter how well you do your job, you can be rated as the worst in your team and heavily penalized. If you have a team of 20 excellent people, and another team has 20 terrible people, each team gets the same % of people with a top rating, and the same % of people with a bottom rating. It forces employees to want their colleagues to perform poorly - it destroys teamwork.

Advice to Senior Management – 1. Eliminate stack ranking.
2. When you produce a product, provide the resources to do a great job on the product. Way too often I saw potentially great products hamstrung by limiting the resources allowed for development.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Microsoft part-time for less than a year

Pros – Free soda. Great Coworkers. Clean building.

Cons – More freedom to move about the building. Understanding there is sensitive materials, but trust employees more.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Microsoft as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Good place to learn how to navigate in a large company

Cons – Very challenging culture (which does seem to be group dependant). My team is not friendly or collaborative. Very often told "you have to figure things out on your own, no one here will help you". They are totally driven by metrics (often with metrics that make no sense). There is still a culture of "everyone wants to work here so we don't need to make an effort to sell people on Microsoft or make candidates feel welcome", even though some in management realize that Microsoft is not so competative anymore. The review process makes everyone compete against eachother. The stress level of everyone around review time (and half yearly reviews) is terrible.

Advice to Senior Management – For recruiting, ask the staffing consultants what metrics should count. For example, why are Staffing Consultants evaluated by the % of hiring manager questionnaire's that are filled out? (something they have no control over). Re-train staffing consultants on how to sell the company and treat candidates with respect and like they are valued. Evaluate the vendor process/program - there is no clear path for how to navigate the system to become an FTE. Change the vendor cutlure - why treat the vendors so poorly when they are contributing so much to the company and have so much training invested in them? Wouldn't you want to retain these people as a benefit to the company and wouldn't you want them to feel valued so they would want to work for Microsoft?

I worked at Microsoft full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great work life balance.
Some really smart people.
Some teams do great work.

Cons – Very top heavy. A lot of people at high career levels but not enough work for all of them => Politics.

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

I have been working at Microsoft full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great company reputation;
Nice working environment;
Many internal opportunities;

Cons – Many people are reluctant to talk to others from a different team;
Culture is conservative;
Sometimes I feel people focus too much on their own work results while ignoring the power of team work

Advice to Senior Management – Working as a team is necessary

I have been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Work on bleeding edge all the time.

Cons – No worklife balance.
Review system is a joke.

Advice to Senior Management – Manager shouldnt just be people aspiring for more money and power. Do more to pick right people manager.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Microsoft full-time

Pros – Decent pay, some orgs have good working environments.

Cons – Health benefits are terrible now.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop the stack ranking review system. It is killing innovation at MS.

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

I have been working at Microsoft full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – once you are in, you can almost always remain employed.

Cons – not very exciting and interesting after working here for a couple of years.

Advice to Senior Management – be determined, make decisions faster and earlier

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend