Used to be great, but Toxicity and Rot have Taken Hold - Anonymous employee Microsoft Employee Review

1.0
8 Jul 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good hybrid flexibility, decent pay - Ex-managers (now fired) were good - Great brand name as company sometimes becomes most valuable in the world

Cons

Mass layoffs all the time to offset excessive AI investments, with good managers that advocate and truly care for employees being made to leave or outright fired. Those that overpromise to upper management remain, resulting in unreachable KPIs. Speaking out will lead to quiet firing as execs play political games. System is also set up to exploit customers as much as possible, making them pay for expensive support. However, this support cannot be used to solve problems, unless it is work that increases customer spending. Everyone, even post-sales technical teams are given sky high sales KPIs. Customers know this but management is only interested in quarterly revenue numbers, even if it severely erodes customer trust long-term. Internal support is horrendous, and there is a severe lack of ownership at all levels. Unfortunately, this is not the fault of rank and file employees as everyone is overworked, and there is an incentive to push work to others. The company sees technical skill as being synonymous with knowing the product suite in a way that is beneficial for selling. Knowing the intricacies and drawbacks of products is not seen as important, as employees are incentivised to sell and leave the problems to others later.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
30 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Best work life balance and career opportunities.

Cons

Constantly changing strategic direction and goals.

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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