Morale is getting lower - Software Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
27 May 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of different areas to work Lots of room to grow technicaly Work-life balance Inclusive culture Good benefits such as 401k match and family coverage for insurance

Cons

Managers are too powerful, it shouldn't be this easy to hire or fire people Diverse teams but not much diversity in the team. There is only Chinese people in most research teams. I mean all Chinese. Pay is lower than most companies, especially on levels like 59,60,61,62 No free food, food on campus is expensive and not tasty. Lots of Mexican food despite there are almost no Mexican engineers. No Russian food despite %20 of the company are Russian. You are pushed to leave company if you improved your skills because changing teams won't affect your level band and salary. Some teams doesn't have much budget but some have a lot of budget. I saw level 60 people who are much better than level 63 seniors but are not paid equally. This makes them unhappy because they are forced to go higher paying companies. Lots of people leave the company because of this reason. Too much bureaucracy between higher and lower band people and they treat you with no respect. Being a contractor here is much better than being a full time employee. You don't have to deal with politics and can survive just by doing your job. Review system is a joke. Not enough accommodations for disabled people. Lots of benefit denials. Not enough financial support for education. My manager offered me $x towards college tuition for a year but actual tuition is more than $20x. It must be a joke.

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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