Amazing opportunities, unfortunate hurdles... - User Experience Designer Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Aug 25, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Microsoft has a lot to offer to anyone looking to learn the business of "big" software development. In my experience, the biggest benefits to working at MSFT is the networking and organizational mechanics visibility you get. I have met a ton of incredibly talented people who later on became important resources for future opportunities (within and outside of MSFT). It felt much like college to me - a time to learn a lot, meet a lot of contacts and grow as an individual. The resources and opportunities are huge at MSFT, though much of the time you realize you are a very small fish in a very large pond. Big aspirations can be squashed frequently after the reality of the organism that is MSFT becomes apparent. But again, the opportunities environmentally outweigh the unfortunate lack of ability for any one person to change the reality of what MSFT is - a giant steam ship that takes years to make a turn.

Cons

The layers of buerocracy and management are the biggest downsides of working at MSFT. It often felt like the job was much like the game show "Survivor," where many of your co-workers were trying to stair step over each other with every project. The culture at MSFT is built to surface the strong type-a personalities to succeed, while the less interested or mellow personalities can be stuck for a long time in unhappy roles. If your goal is to work with a team you can trust to focus on the problem at hand (instead of their own career advancement opportunities), to build truly useful and revolutionary products for people and you ike to have clear ability to affect long term direction - MSFT is most likely NOT the place for you. It is however a good place to learn a tremendous amount and move on from. Just be honest with yourself before you commit.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

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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