A good company, but not a great one - Senior Consultant Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
29 Jun 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I have been working at Microsoft Consulting Services for a year and a half. On the bright side, they are in a moment where the company is redefining its own identity, embracing a lot of open source frameworks and technologies, and moving a lot of effort to compete in cloud computing and data analysis. You have many resources to learn about cool stuff, farther away from the old idea of what Microsoft is about. They are trying to change, fast and hard, and they are taking it very seriously. There are many internal opportunities and you can pursue them freely.

Cons

Life/work balance is bad. You are expected to outperform in ways that, if you really want to compete, your free time will be consumed by a lot of extra stuff, always, and the compensations, at least as I have seen so far, do not, well... compensate. Collaboration is a cynical joke at Microsoft, a real theater. People are out there with corporate machetes in their hands, it's everyone by themselves, and God is against us all. Of course, helping others is a bonus criterion, so in the surface people is generous, but it's too much insincere and in most cases, for show. Traps in every corner, projects surprisingly mismanaged. As already known everywhere, Microsoft's evaluation system is doomed to create internal competition, and ultimately goes against everyone's best interest, the company included.

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5.0
12 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great benefits In federal, you can get a bonus for government clerances Good work culture Value based organization

Cons

lots of change lots of churn federal side does not align to commercial side work life balance is hard with "unlimited PTO"

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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