Solid employer - Software Engineer Intern Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Aug 3, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I really liked the Redmond campus. The fact that it's located in the suburbs is a big advantage, usually you need to move to a city to work for a good company. They have good benefits, like free transportation system, cheap employee restaurants, good health benefits, good compensation, etc. I really liked that they have private offices in many buildings across the campus, unfortunately they are slowly moving towards open space now.

Cons

After my internship I received a full-time offer from Microsoft. As a non-US citizen I needed a H1B visa to work in the US. After I finished my internship I had to wait for around 10 months to finally find out that my petition was not selected in the H1B lottery so there were no options for me to start working in the US in 2016. Microsoft offered me a placement in Canada instead, with a completely new compensation. They also said I would be working remotely with a Redmond team. I didn't really like the perspective of remote work from Canada for around 2 years so eventually I declined the offer. I was really surprised that they couldn't offer a position in Europe where they also have several development centers, eg. Dublin. Another thing I did not like was the fact that it was nearly impossible to get a full-time offer for a different team than the one I interned with. The team seemed rather uninteresting to me and I figured I would get bored there pretty quickly as there probably would not be much opportunity for me to learn. Overall, I enjoyed my time at Microsoft but I really think they should do something about their hiring process for people from outside of US.

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5.0
Jun 7, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Interesting and varied work. Seasonality to the job allows for rest period

Cons

Less stability than there used to be makes people afraid to take risks

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".

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