A great place to work if you find the right team - Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
15 Jun 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Decent pay, and employees are treated very well. The attitude of the place varies from team to team and location to location. The benefits are pretty great, as well, especially free reimbursement for relocation, and the free drinks are a nice perk, too. In general, everybody's pretty laid back, and it's a nice place to work. Hours are very flexible -- you can pretty much come and go as you please as long as you attend any necessary meetings and complete your work on schedule. Then again, when coming up against deadlines, that concept is a double edged sword. Overall it's pretty nice.

Cons

It varies from team to team, but some of them do a ridiculous amount of micromanagement. I've had days in one team where the entire day at work was spent in meetings doing nothing relevant. Generally there's a meeting at least every day, and they almost always run over time while people niggle over small issues that generally don't apply to more than a few people in the meeting. In another team, I was simply set loose to do my assignments. I had maybe one meeting a week to sync up with my manager and maybe another one every month to sync up with his manager.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
7 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Interesting and varied work. Seasonality to the job allows for rest period

Cons

Less stability than there used to be makes people afraid to take risks

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".

2374
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All