Great place to work with lots of opportunites...if you live on the Eastside - User Experience Designer Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Jun 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There are a lot of great opportunities at Microsoft, and room for advancement as well. Additionally, since Microsoft has a diverse set of products, there is the potential for lateral movement if you are interested in exploring a different product area. In addition, you get to use geeky lexicon like "ping me later" or "let's take this offine", etc. :-) Of course, there are the great health benefits...among the best in the biz. This is a great place for someone fresh out of college to work, because there are so many different areas of Microsoft. If Microsoft opens up a substantial presence in the downtown Seattle area in the coming years, I will definitely check out what opportunites there are.

Cons

For me, the biggest problem was the commute. After 10 years or so, it really took it's toll. I like living in Seattle, so whether I drove or took the bus, I could count on a long commute. Sometimes as much as an hour on the way home. My decision to leave was largely based on finding a job with a better commute. I was able to find some great opportunites in Seattle that allowed me to recover an hour each day that I would have previously spent commuting. If you live on the Eastside, Microsoft is a better proposition as the commute is much less.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- great culture - great work life balance - great coworkers

Cons

- feels too relaxed, no one takes the work super seriously - always comparing themselves to apple

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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