Cross function work culture in Microsoft - Program Manager Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
1 Jul 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart, bright people (who take the first flight out to greener pastures)

Cons

Engineering teams are run by Principal Engineering Managers, who essentially do what they feel like with the product, with a complete disregard to processes , practises , roadmaps, backlogs , customer wants - basically any feedback that doesn't impact their appraisal. Agile is a joke, you are lucky if a developer so much as tests what they have coded. The randomest things get the highest priority, cuz it catches the whims and fancies of the EM. Any questioning the code quality might just result in a PR review request to the PM. Most EMs cannot hold their ground in front of aggressive engineers because this impacts their manager rating. This leaves product managers (lets call them that cuz that's what they are irrespective of the program title we slap on them) to take the blame for pretty much anything that is beyond what they can handle. Managers may be technically sound individual contributors but lack leadership ability (apart from the trait that makes you suck up and grow up the career ladder) . The rule of the thumb us convenience - if the ask is out of our comfort zone, let us pretend we got confused and did not understand it correctly. Or let just call it a new requirement. There is zero sense of ethics, of doing the right thing for the product or even for the customer. Inclusion, respect are words we write in our appraisals and put on our event hoardings for better PR. From the inside, we are as hollow as we can be. In my experience as a PM, this is the worst company I have worked for. There is zero support system for doing the right thing. Everything works on manipulation, coercion and how you can stay in the good books of engineering managers, irrespective of your function (even if you are an HR)

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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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