Microsoft, a great place to visit - Senior Product Manager Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Nov 8, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits: Microsoft pays for everything, and then some for you and your whole immediate family. not just awesome health insurance, but huge discounts on gym membership, lawyer fees, restaurants, and more Resume booster: As many issues as Microsoft may or may not have, it is tough to argue that it doesn't look pretty good on a resume Industy experience: There are some very cool things going on in a variety of industries that Microsoft is playing in. Getting involved in these projects can be exciting and even historic in many cases. Internal flexibility: If you don't like your job, boss, team, building location, or even industry, take a look around internally and dip your toes in the water somewhere else. It is pretty easy to maneuver the internal job market.

Cons

Slow to react to industry trends: Microsoft has been historically about 2-3 years behind where they should be from an innovation perspective. See next point for the reason why. Too many meetings and approvals needed to make decisions: I can't stress this enough. Be prepared to move VERY, VERY slowly to get almost anything accomplished. Too many overlapping functions: There's fat in many of the organizations that could be trimmed. Another reason why it takes so long to make decisions. Engineering dominates most business strategies and decisions: This is how Microsoft was built, and it still exists in the corporate culture today. Not a bad thing, unless you're on the business side and you want to try and do the job you were hired for.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 27, 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
Jan 28, 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".

2374
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All