Business Program Manager - Anonymous Employee Microsoft Employee Review
- 3.0Mar 29, 2016Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee, more than 1 yearRedmond, WA
Pros
Great projects, strategic initiatives, progressive company and of course fantastic benefits. Very smart and driven people
Cons
sexism and ageism in the workforce. If you complain, you are marked. constant change makes employees fearful and therefore less collaborative, more defensive and feeling as though "I must succeed at all costs". Review process has NOT changed. On paper yes, but not in reality. If you make many small impacts the work is dismissed for those who may drive one large project. Evaluations are not focused on holistic impact, peer reviews are selective, and can be excluded. process can be very subjective with no recourse. Basically, my experience was if you are sub-ordinate and do not have an engaged or support manager you literally are screwed.
Other Employee Reviews
- 5.0Nov 30, 2023Engineering ManagerCurrent Employee, more than 10 yearsRedmond, WA
Pros
Great culture, inclusive teams , passionate teams
Cons
Nothing notable, minor ups and downs
- 4.0Jan 28, 2013Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee, more than 10 yearsRedmond, WA
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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