There is a lot of fake news and rumors of MSFT east coast expansion so I thought I would do a small write up to help those who are considering Microsoft. Note : I am not in Redmond and have never worked there. I am a SDE II. This is all my personal experience. Use all off it, some of it or none of it when considering MSFT. Microsoft is trying pretty hard to build up a presence in Atlanta and places within Texas as well. I think there are openings in Dallas, Austin and Houston too. For diversity and cost reasons, it makes a lot of sense since Microsoft has way too much competition in the Seattle area. Honestly, your money goes further with MSFT pay even though pay is lower outside Seattle. 1. Is bar lower? Bar at Microsoft is based on org and team. That being said, I notice my manager and principal engineer have a harder time closing reqs in Atlanta i.e. there are fewer hire decisions made and it takes longer to get a hire signal. In Redmond, they make their decision quickly but the top candidate usually decline Microsoft offer so recruiter has to go inform other candidates who sometimes have accepted other offers so hiring keeps going on. 2. How is hybrid and remote culture at Microsoft? This is all based on my interaction with the principal engineers who have spend decades at Microsoft. Before COVID, there were remote roles however it was rare. After COVID, depending on your leadership chain, there are rubber stamping approvals. In my org, there are lots of remote people and people outside Redmond. In other companies and non tech companies especially, it was not uncommon to have teams split across United States and sometimes across the country. In tech companies, generally product areas stick together in the same region. At Microsoft, you will notice some roles have a bunch of locations you can work on. My guess is that specific org has a bunch of 'hubs' where you just have to present in one location to work from there. This is quite common in banks and such. All communication is Teams first and in my org all meetings are recorded. 3. Work difference outside Redmond? I am too low in the ladder and have not been here long enough to really comment on this. When you get hired in Texas or Atlanta or Charlotte or any other office, there are two scenarios. Your entire team and manager sit in the same office or your team is split and you report to manager in Redmond where some of your colleagues are local and some are not. There are challenges to both having a M1 and a crew of engineers separate vs having a distributed team. There have been a lot of complaints about low priority work getting pushed to the satellite offices. In my team this is not true and I fall in the Redmond/hybrid group where I report to Redmond manager. I work with a lot of Redmond colleagues and don't see difference between the work given. You may have to 'fight' for impact i.e. raise your concern with your manager about the impact of your work on the team and business. I think for lower level people like me, it probably does not matter as much where I am. I think after L63 (senior role) politics and such come in where growth might be harder. 4. FOMO of not in Redmond? Every now and then, there are few events that the org goes to which are Redmond based like people going to lunch as a group. Obviously, us outside Redmond can't go but org tries to accommodate us by giving us a Teams event and coupons so all the remote folks can participate. I have also never met or talked to the CVP and VP and such. Basically I have not interacted with anyone above my M2 (skip manager ie managers manager). That being said, I am also just a SDE II so I am not sure if it is important at all at my level to talk to the big shots. All meetings are through Teams and everything is documented. If there are unofficial meetings or discussions happening behind close doors, they have not impacted me yet. Sometimes I wish I was in Redmond but its mostly so I can take photos and post on LinkedIn :) 5. Treatment and respect of satellite employees? There are definitely people within Microsoft who consider Redmond the center of the planet and there is some Redmond centric culture in some orgs where being outside Redmond puts on at significant disadvantage. Every now and then I will be called a 'remote employee' even though I just work at an office outside Puget Sound. Apart from the hot desking, I am not too bothered by the campus tbh. MSFT blind channel, I see people making fun of Atlanta a lot by saying they are diversity hires. I see lots of Indians, Chinese and Asians in Atlanta engineering so I am not sure if that is true. I do feel some Redmond folks are frustrated due to their salary but don't have the desire, courage or motivation to find a new job given there are so many options in Seattle area so they just vent their frustration through other channels. Like I said previously, its important to back yourself and standup for yourself if you feel like you are getting shit on. Overall, I would say for Microsoft, staffing up in Atlanta and Texas is an experiment. I am not a manager and not in leadership so I am not sure if quality of engineering through hybrid or remote is being impacted. I have always worked in teams that were distributed so for me everything virtual first is pretty normal. There are some rumors if economy gets worse and recession hits, when rif or layoffs hit Microsoft would target remote people and satellite employees first but I am not sure if that will happen due to lots of investment outside Redmond. I just think riffing Atlanta as a whole won't be the most cost effective and PR friendly way to conducting a mass purge but I could be wrong and only time will tell. I think if you want to maximize your career growth within the company, at some point you would have to spend some time at least in Redmond but based on org and management for junior mid level employees I think growth is not that tough. TC: 165K
My 0.02: 1. Satellite offices usually are setup to offset cost. Where is there is cheap talent, companies will go. 2. Offers will almost always be lower (barring a few companies that don't do cost of living adjustment) 3. Mundane and lower priority work gets pushed out to these offices. Unless there's a massive presence and entire products are built from there (Hyd campus for example where good engineering work is outsourced) 4. Perks are almost always lower than the HQ. 5. Important business decisions ALWAYS happen from the HQ. 6. You're also first on the chopping block if things go south.
Yall have offices in Dallas and Atlanta too right?
If cost is main motive won't layoffs happen in hq first? I have seen banks do this but banks aren't tech companies