Great Career Development in Microsoft - Software Development Engineer Microsoft Employee Review

5.0
May 23, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Career development is great. Microsoft has a clear measurement tool for employee to know how well he/she is doing, what is needed to be completed to get next promotion. If you are not satisfied with what you are currently doing, you can easily switch to different project in different group internally. You can also switch your role as well such as from a software developer to be a program manager. You can also choose what to focus for your career - as a manager and walk onto the management path, or be an individual contributor and grow yourself as an expect. You do still need to complete with other to get a promotion because of limited budget, but the opportunity of getting promotion is always there. Health benefit is also another great reason to work for Microsoft if you have family.

Cons

Though the benefit comes with Microsoft is great ( lots of discount with buying stuff because of the partnership ), but there's no great cafe in Microsoft campus, nor any three free buffet meal as in other companies. You also need to have a high EQ, because no matter how good your team has achieved in the product, there will be always some persons in some newsgroups or websites whining and bashing what you did and what you provided to them. They never appreciate anything you have done. Next thing is the stock does not grow crazily as other competitors. It is more stable.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Learned a lot, plenty of team work opportunities

Cons

Internship could have been longer than 4 weeks

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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