Great until Senior levels, dirty politics after Senior(63) level and above - Senior Software Development Engineer In Test (SDET) Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
Nov 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you are a junior, out of collage, Microsoft is a great place to start your career. Lots of smart people and mentors to learn from, lots of trainings and resources. Good pay and benefits. No major disturbances.

Cons

After senior (63) and above, you spend most (literally easily 60%) dealing with politics, making sure you look good, watching out for yourself, covering your back, building alliances. If you choose to stay blind, you may survive if you have good management and they do these for you. Otherwise, no matter how good you are, how much great work you do, you may find yourself thrown under bus very fast, very unexpected and even your manager may not be able to save you. Politics are everywhere, don't get me wrong. However, since only people highly political can survive, senior and above is dominated and ruled by people who have their political empires and what matters most (and sometimes what only matters) is where you are in this political map. A minefield for technical people. It also kills your technical savvy by time and makes you irrelevant for the rest of the industry. If you choose to stay at MS at senior levels for extended periods, make sure you are still marketable or you become the slave of this system.

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5.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Amazing work culture and work life balance

Cons

A little slow over all

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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