Microsoft FAQ

Pros

Great people to work with, everyone is super helpful. Good culture, free drinks for employees, good work life balance

Cons

Nothing comes to mind, no cons at all. Best place to work.

Pros

Amazing pay and benefits including discounts, good heath insurance and health care including eyesight and dental, stock compensation, Employee Stock Purchase Program, 401K matching 50% up to a certain amount. Very smart people in the teams, top of their field.

Cons

Very team dependent. You might get a team that does not match your interest and experience since they hire first and match later.

Pros

Great colleagues, always kind and helpful; a very diverse and international workforce, open communication, access to experts from all over the world. A very interesting and dynamic environment, it never gets boring. The company is constantly innovating and is at the forefront of cutting edge technology. Flexible work time, possibility to work from home or go to office, whatever you like, mixed with customer visits and sometimes a trip to the US. In 9 years I was 3 times in Seattle, once in Boston and once in Las Vegas (don't miss Vegas!). Great perks and benefits: competitive salary, performance based bonus, stocks, company car, private pension fund, insurances. Great possibilities to learn, grow, and move into different roles, if that's what you want.

Cons

Quite stressful, you will have always more work than you can get done. It's impossible to stay sane without relentlessly prioritizing. Long working hours. The information overflow one gets constantly bombarded with can be quite demanding. It is sometimes difficult to keep pace with all the changes. Just doing your job will never get you promoted. You have to go the extra mile and do something out of the ordinary to be noticed and promoted. The management will get obsessed from time to time with certain performance indicators, often beyond reason, pushing people to the limit in order to achieve targets that someone put on her/his banner. Then next fiscal year everything will be forgotten and the madness starts again for a new performance indicators.

Advice to Management

Have more trust in your employees and empower them instead of prescribing how they must work.

Pros

I love working at Microsoft. We have great culture and amazing benefits. A few of my favorites are the 50% match on every dollar that goes into our 401K, the generous stock bonuses each year, $1500 a year to go towards fitness/wellness needs and no monthly health insurance premiums. Lastly, we just have really good people! I very rarely work with anyone I don't get along with and have made some really great friendships!

Cons

PTO - We have 3 weeks of PTO which is good compared to the average two weeks off but not compared to other tech companies that start at 4 weeks off or have unlimited PTO. In addition, you have to wait 6 years for an increase in PTO. Team sizes - I was surprised by how many people were on a team. The smallest team I've been on is 14 people and the largest has been 19. My last company capped teams at 10 people and I felt like I had a much closure working relationship with my manager. I struggle to get meaningful time with my manager with a team of 19 people right now. Work/life balance + Stress - Depending on which customer I am working with the role can be very stressful. I find it pretty hard to detach from work at the end of the day and often stress dream and lose sleep. This is stress I am getting from the customer, not from my manager or other internal leaders.

Advice to Management

Consider offering more PTO and making the teams smaller

Pros

Big company, so easy to transfer internally. Lots of perks life free gym, great insurance and facilities, great parties.

Cons

WLB is team specific and what you make of it. Engineers are not best of class. TC is way below FAANG.

Advice to Management

Managers needs to be trained and selected way more thoroughly. Managers at most part lack tech skills, lots and lots of politics. Managers abuse their power and occasionally abuse employees .