Microsoft Work Experience

Microsoft is a fun place to work for. Things have drastically changed since I joined almost 4 years ago under Satya’s tenure.

Work Culture:

I joined Microsoft straight out of school as a shy and introverted person. I was that person who’d rather spend 2 days figuring out stuff on my own rather than chin up and ask someone for help. But that changed over the years since people are more than happy to help others get unblocked and spend quality time with you to ensure you are on board rather than moving at the speed of a TGV and expecting you to jump on board and deliver. My managers have always been very objective about my performance and have given me great constructive feedback to improve myself and get better. Growth was an important factor for me in terms of job satisfaction and I feel far more emboldened now to chime in my ideas speak my mind about design shortcomings and offer new solutions.

Compensation and Benefits:

Microsoft is not on par with other major tech companies in terms of pay and they are aware of the dissatisfaction this has caused among employees. But the benefits are great - we get great healthcare benefits, prime discounts, Microsoft software and hardware with employee discounts and free gym memberships to fancy sports clubs. We have 3 months of paid paternity leave for new dads and 6 months of paid maternity leave for new moms. We also have paid family care leave of 1 month to take care of a sick family member and paid bereavement leave of 1 month to take care of a family member’s loss. I wouldn’t care about the extra money a company offers if I could take a month off to attend to my sick family member and still get paid.

Work-life balance:

Nobody expects us to reply to emails over the weekend or after 6 pm. Work is very well planned and we always know what we are working on and what to expect over the upcoming months. Sure, occasionally we might work late nights to ensure that things are lit up for that big demo or presentation - but never to the point of exhaustion or feeling burnt out. I have never carried my work laptop to any of my vacation destinations (including long India trips).

Flexibility:

We have co-workers from all spectrum and Microsoft has a great way of accommodating it all. I have a co-worker who can work only from 7 to 3 since he commutes from a far place and has to pick his kids up from school - so we schedule meetings accordingly. We have a few other teammates who work from home quite often since they have a young kid. We have 3 of our team members working from Vancouver, CA for h1B visa issues - Microsoft is great in terms of supporting its employees through visa issues. We always ensure that we schedule our team outings only when the Vancouver folks can join in. I believe people produce their best work when they are given the freedom and liberty to do that work from wherever they feel most comfortable.

Tech:

I work in a Windows organization(now it's all Cloud + AI) and thankfully, my team is pretty bold in terms of adopting and experimenting with the latest products out there. We use a lot of open source libraries and our SDKs are open-source as well. We are given full liberty to research into latest capabilities to make our applications run faster and better and implement them.

People:

Honestly, this is what makes Microsoft special to me. I always feel like the people in my team have my back and they are more than forthcoming to help me out when am stuck. My GEM (manager’s manager) is also super fun and last week, we watched all the FIFA semi-finals in our conference room with the whole team while she complained about people who scheduled meetings during the World Cup semi-finals. You wouldn’t be surprised to run into people who have stayed at Microsoft for more than 10 years. Most of them I’ve come across put down roots in Microsoft and I can see why.

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