Stay away if you are not adept at managing perceptions and managing up - Senior Program Manager Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
23 Aug 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

For college hires, MSFT is (still) a good brand to have on your resume and a great place to gain some experience. There are only a handful of software companies that deliver products to hundreds of millions of users worldwide. We also have a variety of products and technologies so there are opportunities to work on other problem spaces and wear different hats if you get bored. For industry hires, stability is the word of the day. The company has weathered its growing pains, matured from lessons learn and have consistently produced strong numbers year after year. Those with families will appreciate the very good benefits package and solid work life balance. You're unlikely to suffer from burnouts or strategic fluctuations as long as you pick the right group.

Cons

Much has been said about our performance review and stack-ranking system. MSFT is not unlike other for-profit corporation after all. If you are not adept at managing perceptions and managing your manager - stay away. Mid level folks will find career advancement opportunities limited. There's an entrenched middle management in almost every division and they're not going anywhere soon. As you go higher up, promotions is about who you know and who knows you. This is a matured company now. The passion from the 90's growth days are long gone.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
27 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

good work life balance, culture and career growth

Cons

less compatitive salary compare to other big company

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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