Great culture and place to be...sometimes a tad crazy though - Human Resources Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Jul 6, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great place to learn and grow and grow at scale Open to new things now and not so closed off as in the past Truly collaborative within your team and getting better outside of your immediate teams... Embrace the concepts of being able to leverage each other all the time (and now expect this across the Company) + contributing to other's success (not just a tagline but truly happens). Correct CEO- excellent leader and just what we needed to become relevant again

Cons

Work Life Balance can sometimes be a challenge (not too crazy like Amazon) but you have to really manage your own boundaries otherwise it will consume you Can be a bit difficult to navigate and know who is who in order to get stuff done- highly matrixed Political in some groups meaning who likes who, who has a good rep and using that to their advantage otherwise if you don't play that game you are left in the dust Pay is fine but not as strong as it should be For our org specifically, we do not really reward people for the work they really produce or make impact on (there are still some pockets of the old ways in HR).

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5.0
Jul 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Phenomenal benefits and pay is good. Good shift schedule and built in overtime

Cons

Hard to learn anything new. You will stagnate

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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