10+year veteran @ MSFT. Laid off recently. - Senior Software Engineer Microsoft Employee Review
- 3.0Nov 21, 2016Senior Software EngineerFormer Employee, more than 10 yearsRedmond, WA
Pros
There are good people there. Made lots of friends and connections. A wealth of technologies and roles can be yours! Depending on the group: a good work-life balance. The company itself appears to be on a good trajectory!
Cons
This may sound like "sour grapes" due to recently being laid off by them, but here goes. (Note, most of this has to do with the last group I was in. I hope many others find this NOT to be true.) * No loyalty: After 10+ years, I came in one day and was let go with FIVE days to find a new job internally. HR doesn't even move that fast! It wasn't performance-based (it came as a surprise to my manager, too) and via the black box that is HR I can only speculate why I was let go: politics? ageism? racism? I was too short? randomly? etc... * Management in some orgs view devs as indistinct work units. "For project X I need Y people." Talent, experience, etc. doesn't matter as much anymore; just someone with a pulse that's breathing and knows C#. * Politics. Sure, most places have it, but my last position was the first time I've seen retributive actions taken by senior management to get rid of less-than-supportive team members (not me). * Cronyism: I've seen my teammates not get funding for plane travel from his hometown to campus (Redmond) once every 3-6 months and thus traveled via bus. Meanwhile friends of senior management fly home weekly to California. Friends and the "good ol' boys" are more important than the business or fairness. Even while I was getting laid off, certain "good ol' boys" were still hiring their friends from outside Microsoft. * Sexism: Our group's leadership were entirely comprised of Indian males. Unfortunately India has a prevalent sexist culture in many places, and this was transferred to our group. I have Indian friends (male and female) who agree with me, so please don't accuse me of being racist. The women in our group were frequently marginalized and one quit after being told to "shut up and be quiet" during a meeting. Not wishing to cause waves none of them wanted the bother and hassle of reporting it to HR so they just left. * Lack of support for remote folks. It's the 21st Century and some entire orgs have a "no remote" policy.
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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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