Microsoft reviews

4.0

77% would recommend to a friend

(53,844 total reviews)
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Satya Nadella

77% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Microsoft has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 53,844 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Microsoft employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the IT (Information Technology) industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

54K reviews
3.0
Jul 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Top company. Good health benefits. Work life balance is good. Opportunity to work with some of the top people in the industry and learn a lot. Plenty of teams within and many interesting projects to work. Internal transfer between teams is allowed (compensation and level wont change even though you have the experience) so you can get a diverse experience (server side stuff, devices etc. ). As long as you have the skills you can also try out different roles like SDE, SDET, and PM. Some of the teams have excellent software engineering practices. It is easy to find rental accomodation closer to the company which is an upside for me. Great for junior and college hires.

Cons

Middle level candidates (4-6 years experience) usually dont get the compensation and level they deserve. Many times new college hires earn more than experienced candidates. When joining please do your homework and negotiate a proper level and compensation. Once you are in it is almost impossible to reach your expected level. Even though management says promotions are based on contributions and not based on the time served in the company in practice it is actually opposite. Yearly performance reviews are absolute waste of time. Many of the first level managers (leads) are horrible. They do not have the technical or management experience and experienced ICs have a hard time working for them. Not so nice weather in seattle area.

2.0
Jul 20, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart people. Good work-life balance. Good training opportunities. Microsoft generally offers a variety of classes at their campuses (such as the SVC campus) so you can usually find something you like. Microsoft medical benefit is still No. 1 in the industry. So take advantage of it while you can.

Cons

Slow career growth. Lower pay comparing to other tech companies. Hugely political review system. Team members are pit against each other at review time. Low merit raise overall.

4.0
Jul 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Microsoft believes its mission is to provide people around the world with tools that enable them to make their lives better. Tools that empower people to communicate, solve problems and innovate. Its a noble cause, for which one can feel some measure of pride. Microsoft is growing, perhaps not as much as we would all like, but it is increasing employees every year. The opportunities across professional disciplines, businesses and geographies are significant. Want to work overseas? Pick a country; transferring is relatively easy. Want to work on an incubation product, or perhaps the big dog Windows? Ok. Transferring between business groups can be done too. One can amass a diver portifolio of experiences here. It offers a unique career development landscape. And because Microsoft has such a diverse set of businesses, it can weather economic or geographic risk pretty well, meaning it is a place where one can feel some semblance of job security.

Cons

Microsoft is now a very large company. It has all the problems faced by other large compnaies: too much process, too many stakeholders to make decisions quickly, becoming political at the top, too disconnected from customers. It is a complex matrix that can often get in the way of doing the right thing, and doing it quickly.

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Glassdoor has 68,400 Microsoft reviews submitted anonymously by Microsoft employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Microsoft is right for you.