Big and bloated, but still a great company to work for... - Test Manager Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Jan 10, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits package is great, especially if you have a special needs kid. Pay is very comparable to other companies, and if you have been around for a few years in a higher level above L63, your annual stock grant chunks and bonus add nicely to your base pay. You work on something, and you have all the latest and greatest tools at your fingertips with a tremendous amount of bright people around you. The campus is a fun place to work especially in the new buildings, and the sports fields are a nice touch. Over the years work life balance has gotten much much better. Changing to "Career stage profiles" for how you track your career growth through different disciplines is still controversial, but much better than some old word doc called a "ladder level guide" that was obscure prone to interpretation issues. This new way helps new employees have a baseline with examples of technical, customer connection, soft skills and teamwork, and other categories for what is expected. Free drinks does not make a job "better", but from what I remember they were a trend setting starting this practice a long time ago and many dot-coms also did this and bested it with free food to boot. We still have full fridges on each floor, nice to have and you really take it for granted if you have been around for a while. Mentors are everywhere and we have a formal mentor program that has worked well for me and many others that I know. Regardless of your tenure or experience, I think many benefit from the ability to pick a mentor and get unbiased advice as an ear to listen to your questions.

Cons

Most hiring managers and recruiters pitch "very easy to move around within Microsoft if you want a new challenge". Well reality is if you are even half way decent, and have been in a team for a bit and are adding solid value, chances are you will have resistance when you try to leave. Or better yet like it has happened to thousands of employees, you actually get "blocked" from interviewing in another team. It has gotten better though in that you don't get blocked much anymore as they finally put accountability on managers to stop this horrible tactic of doing this and now a VP has to approve a "block", so that manager has to explain why you are soooooo valuable and non-replaceable that they can't let you go.

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5.0
Jul 6, 2026
Anonymous temporary employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great Company to work with.

Cons

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4.0
Jan 28, 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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