Employee Review
- Current Employee, more than 10 years★★★★★
Thoughts after 10 years....
Jan 28, 2013 - Anonymous Employee in Redmond, WARecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
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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Other Employee Reviews
- Current Employee, more than 5 years★★★★★
You are greatly rewarded for impacts made!
May 28, 2023 - Principal Project ManagerRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Benefits Salary Opportunities Rewards Growth
Cons
More work to do with out enough resources
- Current Employee, more than 1 year★★★★★
Good place to work, not the best but good
May 25, 2023 - Senior Consultant in Atlanta, GARecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Compensation package is great. Salary is competitive, though perhaps a bit on the low side - make 172k a year. Bonus last year was 30k and 48k in stock. Love the benefits, no charge for Health Insurance is awesome and the Perks+ stuff. You literally cannot find all of the benefits, people have spreadsheets to keep up with their are so many. The culture though is amazing. If you ever want a day off, you just need to ask. Teams are willing to help you and bend over backwards in an emergency. I love the people
Cons
I hate the review process as it feels arbitrary and, in some cases, its like a research project. It is also very inconsistent. My first manager had a slide deck where you had to research and fill in the values. Second manager basically said she does it off the communication notes. There is also a huge disparity in people's skill level. You would think being MSFT you would be with the best of the best and people who really know the platform, sadly not really the case. It turns out Microsoft ISD is like most places where you get good apples and bad apples.
