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Lots of experience available, but you may give up more personal time

Hardware Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Microsoft for less than 1 year
May 1, 2009
Redmond, Washington
4.0
RecommendsNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Plenty of different things go on there, from software products to hardware products.

Along the HW products side, like the Xbox, there are full low-level SW tasks for SW dev types to upper-level design stuff (e.g., user interface, etc.). It's a full range where a person can learn and grow into.

Similar things happen with hardware designers. They can work with state-of-the-art CPUs and GPUs to low-level controllers. Again, a large space to pick work from.

There's also exposure to products that are produced in the millions per year. Not many places to work that provide the experience with things on that scale.

Cons

Although work/life balance is talked about a lot, in reality, management is so poor in scheduling products. Workers tend to always be behind and need to work extra hours to get done on time.

Advice to Management

Pay more attention to long-term planning so that projects can be kicked off when needed. This way, adequate time can be allotted for completion without having to work 60 hours a week to get there.

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