Competitive environment but not much growth - Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) Microsoft Employee Review

3.0
Jun 6, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pretty good benefits. Stayfit benefit was nice where you can get a gym membership, reimbursement plan, or a flat stipend. Healthcare wasnt bad either. Stable job environment. Retention is fairly high and there are a lot of seasoned coworkers. Company is stable and many product areas to try. An obvious one, but the status that comes from working for an iconic company.

Cons

Not as much room for promotion or growth (at least on the team I was on). People were very competitive, but the vibe was that management expected people to work with both ends of the candle burning as the norm. While there are many product areas, my impression is that exploring other teams and trying to transfer to another is strongly discouraged. Transfering to a different division is even more of a challenge. Not much support by management to explore areas of interest in terms of new tools or technologies. This might have been a culture trait of my team. Lots of redundant menial work that should be automated, but no bandwidth given to work on tools for these. Also a lot of the existing tools were slow or error prone and needed to be improved or redone, but again no bandwidth given for these. Not great at onboarding new employees in my team (I am not referring to the general NEO done by HR). Lack of training materials and outreach to integrate new FTEs.

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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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