Five stars then, one star now - Senior Content Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
10 Mar 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Once, there was great, exciting work, a commitment to quality and standards, and the feeling that you mattered. If you had the luck to be on a good team with a supportive manager like I was, the sky was the limit to what you could imagine and achieve. You felt empowered to constantly take on more responsibility, learn new skills, promote your ideas, and be compensated and appreciated appropriately. Even today, the people working there are very smart, and some are interesting. Microsoft treats its employees quite well. The campus is beautiful, the food is good, some people still get private offices, and the charitable match, tuition reimbursement, fitness, free commute and parking, and other benefits are fantastic. Plus you get a lot of prestige, respect, discounts etc. by working for Microsoft.

Cons

Anymore, Microsoft cares only for its stockholders and stock price. They will do anything, including cutting as many employees and programs as possible, making their products worse, and mistreating their users, to reduce costs and improve the bottom line. If you are old or female, if you work in content, especially if you have been successful and long-term so your salary is high, you will or probably have been axed. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. They used to hire "Microsoft material" and train you as needed, but now they hire whoever can do the job du jour for the cheapest price, then they will kick them to the curb too. No one's job is safe except possibly the upper management layer whose sole concern is to keep their own jobs and fiefdoms. Expect to work with lots of minimum viable products, cancelled projects, reorgs, office moves, and a weird Microsoft jargon that is mostly TLAs. Endless meetings and PowerPoints yet a lack of communication, wasted and duplicated efforts that can go on for years. Also expect your family and friends to constantly complain or seek your help with their Microsoft products, and to realize that a lot of the outside world hates or scorns Microsoft and with good reason.

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5.0
26 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

benefit and wlb are good

Cons

a lot of layoffs lately

4.0
28 Jan 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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