Generally a good company, but watch out for toxic districts - Anonymous employee Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
24 May 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Super well paying jobs with great benefits, better than most other companies out there. If you are social, well-liked among the upper management, and can play company politics well, you will be successful here. Best advice is not to advance too quickly, and be mediocre, and you will have a great home life as well. If you give too much and people start expecting too much of you, you will get taken and left out to dry. Other than NY Metro, mid-level career progression is actually quite good, and you can build a name for yourself amongst the technical side of the business.

Cons

Being at Microsoft for almost ten years and around several regions and teams, New York Metro sales is probably the most toxic of all U.S. teams from which you should avoid. The bullying culture is still very much alive, and unless you can also be a jerk, you won't survive here. In general, people lack passion for what they do, though they have passion for their own personal lives, which is covered up by the compensation. If you have Microsoft on your resume for too long, it might actually hurt you, because you're too bought into the ecosystem and less desirable for other companies, especially startups. Good employees are often let go or allowed to walk away, while bad managers are protected by their managers and HR.

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5.0
22 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The work life balance is great.

Cons

Very little pay not competitive.

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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