Career trajectory for program Manager at MSFT
What does the career for an MBA graduate starting out as a Program Manager at Microsoft look like ? Edit: The person hired is definitely a program manager. Would be great if we could focus on the career trajectory and not on "does MSFT hire PMs"
MS hires PMs from fresh grads MBA/Non-MBA
To answer your question, trajectory doesn't necessarily change due to MBA, just starting point differs from undergrad hire (59/60) Probably hired at 61 +/- a level 2-4 years to get to 63/senior band Senior band can be terminal spot, but if you keep growing, 3+ years to get to 65/principal (but way more than that is likely unless you're a shooting star) Going past principal band is tough At senior there might be opportunity to transition to management/lead track, but that's more likely at 65/principal (can be group PM there). Might have some of the titles off there but that's the general trajectory, rare to go past the 65/66 range and on to GM+
Depends... First off, Microsoft doesn't recruit MBAs to be program managers from on campus recruiting. You can though after working as a PM in another company or as a PMM or Ops PM internally. I would also recommend focusing on being a PM for front end or business oriented feature otherwise it will not leverage your business strengths. You will encounter very little PMs with MBA in non managerial roles but they are more common in leadership roles (e.g. Satya was PM with MBA). That journey does take substantial amount of time though.
2-3 years to pm2 if hired at 59, another 2-4 years to senior Pm, another 4-10 years to principal would be standard. Around principal is when you become a PM manager, having PM reports.
Msft came to my bschool. I know of 2 other MBAs who got PM offers. I also got Msft PM offer with 1st round interview on my school's campus.