If you are very ambitious, user research in Microsoft is not the place to be - try program management - User Experience Researcher Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
Apr 25, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Experience working for a large enterprise and the usefulness of having Microsoft on your resume. Also experience working with a few very talented people. However, Microsoft is a very developer led company where user experience is not well placed to make big impact on the product or get big rewards from execs (because it is seen as a peripheral discipline not a core discipline). If like me, you had great reviews and got great bonuses them you will be frustrated by the middle managers above you who usually do not come from the discipline and who you have to try to work around rather than with. Ultimately it is a frustrating place to work if you believe that design and usability should be a major driving force in product development, rather than resources that get called in when the teams think they need them (which is almost always too late). I got out because my ambitions could not easily be met in the lumgering giant that Microsoft has now become, where so much time is wasted on products by poor integration of disciplines such as program management, marketing, product management, development and test that once design and usability get involved too many bad descisions have already been made. If you want to work in a company like Microsoft was, find a medium sized company that is up and coming - a company that is agile and a company where you can sit in the room with the people who run the company (or at least your group) and who can recognize your good work when you do it.

Cons

In the User Research discipline, Microsoft is not very forward thinking and the user research groups are poorly organized and are not well placed for impact

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5.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very good flexibility with remote work Very good pay level at initial joining years Excellent team dynamics and coachable engineers

Cons

Very less hike post 4-5 years into the role Very good teams but as a senior has responsibility over shadow all junior work

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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