Not bad in overall but care more about managers than engineers - Software Engineer II Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Oct 30, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Not too bad work-life balance, ok pay and great benefits. A great learning opportunity especially for those who work under Azure. Tech stacks are improving fast.

Cons

Worst company if you have a bad manager who can just ruin your Microsoft career by just checking an "Insufficient Results" in your connect. ICs have ZERO chance to challenge it.

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
Jun 30, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Love it you are surrounded with smart people and complex problem to solve

Cons

Lots of new features and roll outs happening hard to keep pace

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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