great company but limited career advancement opportunities - Account Manager Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
Oct 10, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The name of Microsoft on your CV is great to have. There is a supportive collegiate atmoshere where the employees help out each other without the dog-eat-dog atmoshere of other companies. There is a fantastic work-life balance where time off is not just permitted but promoted. They value employees and their families. The benefits package is flexible and is very reasonable - perhaps the best I have had in my career to date. The tools you get to do your job are cool. They are very focused on being "green".

Cons

Microsoft do not pay very well. It is a product-focused sales organisation (if you are in the Sales, Marketing and Services Group) when it should be embracing "Solution" selling and a consultative approach to its customers. It is now focused on short-term revenue targets and drive short-term behaviour. The upper management team is OK but somewhat ineffective; the middle-managers tend to micro-manage their team based on weekly revenue reporting. It is anticipated that you self-serve when it comes to knowledge about products etc. Email overload and too many meetings (but this is common in large comanies).

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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