Great Place to work - Software Development Engineer II Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
28 Aug 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get to work on things that everyone in the world including your friends and family use. If you are working hard and are excited about your project and customers you will be rewarded. Just like Google's 20% time if you are getting your work done you are encouraged to find "relevant" extra work that you get to choose and are rewarded greatly if you do.

Cons

Compared to Google it appears that Microsoft is too focused on making money. Microsoft management does not seem to inform employees of their long term vision and why a change in direction occurred and more importantly why they choose that direction as opposed to some of the other possibilities.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

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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