UK Leadership bad - share price good - Sales Specialist Microsoft Employee Review

2.0
19 Oct 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working with smart and passionate people makes you smarter and a more driven employee and there are still some great people in the UK and HQ (Seattle) If you're early in career then Microsoft will give you a potential bump in pay but will definitely give exposure to great customers and products such as AI and cloud

Cons

The leadership in the UK, EMEA, and US, are in it for their share pay out at the end of the year, and the easiest way to do that is cut headcount / cost in Microsoft Q3 so the end of year balance sheet looks better - means you can can and quite often will lose you're job when you over achieve. UK specific but Clare Barclay (UK CEO) has thrown all of her teams and leadership under the bus to save her own job and so the culture is really bad. There has been a big move to get high earners off the payroll even though they are there because they deliver positively to the culture and the number. As a result teams now repeatedly miss their targets and bonus If you're experienced then come to Microsoft knowing its a stepping stone but also that your base is almost certainly a lot lower than the person youre replacing. T&E has been massively cut so limited travel and transport for team meetings, no travel to the US, and no UK Christmas party for the last 2 years to help the sub save money despite record profits

Explore other reviews about Microsoft

5.0
1 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good peer interns and full time researchers

Cons

I don't like this city.

4.0
28 Jan 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".

2374
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All