Company is undergoing huge changes to try to catch up to the industry - Software Development Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
Apr 5, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Good Benefits for new grads with a 100k+ base, sign on stock, and yearly bonuses. 2. Fairly simple promotion route (can be promoted every 1.5 years if you're slightly above average) assuming you're in a growing Organization (Cloud + Enterprise is hiring and growing, so it's more easily get promoted there than in a well established organization like Windows or Office. 3. Work Life Balance is really up to you. I have seen people come in every day and work less than 40 hours a week and still get promoted (albeit at a slower pace than others) 4. Looks good on the resume, and there wont be a shortage of recruiters reaching out to you.

Cons

Microsoft was once the Mecca for Software Engineers. While it's now still prestigious, start-ups and other big companies (FB, Google, Amazon) are held in higher esteem. The company is still trying to become more agile in nature. They've done this by laying off staff, and converting all SDETs into Software Engineers. Due to the conversions, some organization are still figuring out what to do as they now have people with decades of experience testing code who are expected to now compete with other Devs who have decades of experience writing code. Teams which run web services are slowly starting to release at quicker intervals, but it's still a work in progress. The culture is different in each org, so be careful of which teams you choose. Middle management is still embroiled in politics. Reorgs are also fairly common, so do not get to attached to one manager. You will definitely be the a small cog in a massive machine if you join Microsoft. You will not have much power to affect the company. So if you're looking for high impact work where you can be agile and heavily dictate the future of the product, then this may not be the company for you.

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5.0
Jul 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

flexibility, work, PTO, culture, calm

Cons

meaning, meaning, repetitiveness, admin, beaurocratic

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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