Great benefits but uninspiring work and really confused management. - Software Engineer II Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Feb 10, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent Benefits - Healthcare support is excellent, I have gotten so many expensive procedures and tests done from the best doctors and not had to pay a single penny. Also great for families for this very reason **Although most benefits will erode by 2013 Broad portfolio of products - If you get bored of working on office products, you can work on xbox or search (bing) or developer tools (visual studio). Microsoft makes everything! Good support staff and facilities - Shuttle bus services, prime card discounts etc. etc. Good Innovative work in VERY SELECT groups. Just pray you get into one of them and never get re-orged out.

Cons

- Re-orgs - I have been in this company or almost 3 years and switched teams twice and barely got to write any code, why? Because the group cannot decide its org structure so it keeps re-orging and the developers as a result never get to really *work* on stuff. I've noticed this in two different organizations (servers & tools and Bing). Re-orgs are KILLING employee morale, wasting company money and serving no real purpose. - Too much bureacracy - I have to jump through hoops to switch to a different job within the same company. Ordering a freakin' Book is a nightmare. - Bubble effect - Most people are heavily soaked in the company kool-aid and don't realize that Microsoft products are slowly getting irrelevant in the market. Some people don't even have a clue about what the competitive products are out there. People will have intellectually dishonest debates with you just to satiate their over inflated ego rather than understand what a hole the company is in. - Very low on CREATIVITY, very little ORIGINALITY. Everyone likes to do things in an certain way - its like a government job. - Lot of politics at Principal and General Manager Level. Sometimes who speaks the loudest gets ahead - although its a truism in most places but its sad to see this happen in a technical, facts driven company. - There is SOME exciting work happening, but you need to be in the right place and pray to got that you don't get re-orged out.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Learned a lot, plenty of team work opportunities

Cons

Internship could have been longer than 4 weeks

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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