This is in regards to working at Turn 10 - Vehicle Artist Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Oct 2, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The opportunity to work on such great games as Forza and Forza: Horizon was a great experience. The art teams, Vehicle Art in particular, were amazing people to work with and made coming into work everyday enjoyable. The studio had a somewhat decent cafeteria, free soft drinks/coffee/tee and if you had to work late or on weekends they brought in food.

Cons

As an artist you would expect to be making great art. That's not the case at Turn 10. All the fun content creation is outsourced to India and Vietnam. At Turn 10 the artist basically polish and refine the assets that the vendors return. It's often tedious and boring work. On occasion you would have to model or texture something that was missed or incorrect but most of the time you were just touching up something. The other problem with working at Turn 10 and Microsoft in general is they don't tend to hire full time. It's contracts only. If you're good and the team likes you there's a good chance they will hire you back for another contract but if stability is what you're after stay away from Microsoft/Turn 10. Also, you don't actually work for Microsoft you work for an outsource agency that hires you out to Microsoft. This way Microsoft doesn't have to pay you benefits or profit sharing. You can get benefits from your agency but probably not as good as Microsoft gives to its actual employees.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Microsoft Federal is a strong place to work if you want exposure to mission-driven customers and large-scale cloud, AI, security, and data transformation work. The federal business gives you the opportunity to work on meaningful problems that matter beyond traditional commercial outcomes, especially across national security, public safety, defense, and civilian agency missions. The brand carries a lot of credibility with customers, and Microsoft has a very broad technology portfolio, which gives employees the ability to bring real solutions to complex problems. There are also many smart, collaborative people across engineering, sales, customer success, partner teams, and leadership who genuinely want to help customers succeed. Compensation and benefits are strong, especially compared to many other federal technology roles. There is also flexibility in how you manage your work, and the company provides access to a deep internal network, learning resources, and career mobility if you are proactive. For people interested in AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and government modernization, Microsoft Federal can be an exciting place to build experience and credibility.

Cons

The biggest challenge is organizational complexity. Microsoft is a very large company, and getting things done often requires navigating multiple internal teams, priorities, approval chains, and competing motions. This can slow down execution, even when the customer need is clear. Roles can sometimes feel overly matrixed, where accountability is shared across many groups but ownership is not always clear. Sellers and customer-facing teams may spend a significant amount of time coordinating internally instead of directly advancing customer outcomes. There can also be a gap between the pace of commercial innovation and what is actually available, accredited, or practical in federal environments. This is especially true in government cloud, AI, security, and regulated workloads. Employees often have to manage customer expectations carefully when product messaging moves faster than federal availability or implementation realities. Career growth can vary significantly depending on your manager, account alignment, internal visibility, and whether your work maps cleanly to leadership priorities. High performers can still feel stuck if their role is not positioned well within the broader organization.

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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