A challenging, rewarding environment with great benefits - Technical Lead Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
May 12, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Microsoft offers some of the best opportunities in the industry for personal and professional advancement. There is quite simply no other company in the world that will offer you the resources to grow to as deep of a technical level. Community involvement in the form of blogging, attending industry events, presenting, and even time for charity work are all highly encouraged. The medical benefits are the best of any US company, hands down - I have never paid a penny for any clinic or hospital visit, including when my child was born. Management tends to be fairly hands-off in support as long as you are producing and competent. Compensation is excellent with generous stock awards and occassional cash bonuses. Yearly salary increases can be close to double-digits for high performers.

Cons

The things that make Microsoft such a good fit for some make it extremely stressful for others. You will be expected to guide your own career and to be responsible for much of your own learning. This means that you'll probably always be reading up on something and will always feel a littel behind. You'll never acheive a comfort zone in terms of career growth. The environment is competetive, and laid back types who just want to "come in and do my job" will be limited in how far they can advance. Travel is required. Working with outsourcers overseas can be stressful and unrewarding because there is no mentoring relationship to speak of - you will be dealing with lowest common denominator individuals overseas who have no incentive to learn or better themselves because the people back in the States can always get them out of a bind. Support tends to be underfunded, and you will not have all of the benefits that people in the Redmond campus have (but you won't pay $500K for a shabby house an hour away from work, either).

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 7, 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
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".

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