Depends on where you land. - Software Engineer-II Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
2 Jul 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Competitive salary and great benefits. I relocated from a less competitive software industry in comparison to Puget Sound, so I'm probably underestimating a good living. There are a lot of cool things going on at Microsoft. It feels like you're entering a pretty special company, given its track record. Regardless of anyone's strengths or weaknesses, you'll encounter some pretty smart people here and it feels good to work with capable people. There generally feels to be a high standard of technical understanding without penalizing those who don't know everything. Most managers and peers are friendly and helpful. The facilities are modern and clean with amenities. You should have just about any resource you'll need to do the best job you can.

Cons

Microsoft is a 10 ton behemoth with who knows how many teams, products, and organizations. It's unreasonable to believe you can be satisfied with your job just anywhere. Enjoyment of your job is highly dependent on what team you're on and the specific things you're responsible for. Some organizations are bound to aging tools, codebases, and other technical debt issues that can make work stressful and uninteresting. On the other end, there are teams building bleeding edge tools and services that you can nerd out forever on.

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5.0
12 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great benefits In federal, you can get a bonus for government clerances Good work culture Value based organization

Cons

lots of change lots of churn federal side does not align to commercial side work life balance is hard with "unlimited PTO"

4.0
28 Jan 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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