Getting old and boring... - Anonymous employee Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Jun 15, 2008
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Microsoft is a good place to learn. It is big enough of a company where you can move around for a position you truely enjoy and have passion in. In general, people change role in 18 months. You can move up, across, etc. I have changed job three times in the last five years. Alhtough I am not getting promoted everyt time. I do feel that I am changing for the better. The review system is fair and "make sense". Some people complain that it is too competitive but I think it is a good way to weed out people you don't want to work with anyway.

Cons

Microsoft is too big and not nimble enough. It missed tons of opportunities when they could have been catpured with the right vision and priority. It seems like we are always following and not leading.

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5.0
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Cons

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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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