Microsoft has given the technology world some of the most innovative software products. So regardless of your geographical location and economic status, the odds are that you've come across a Microsoft product. Based on Market capitalization, Statista notes that Microsoft is the second-largest software company in the world as of December 2022. In addition, Microsoft has made bridging the digital gap a core social responsibility.
It has even partnered with businesses across America and Europe to create unique apprenticeship models that lower barriers to entering the tech industry. One of these models is the Microsoft Leap, launched in 2015 to provide individuals with alternative backgrounds an opportunity to launch lucrative tech careers. So, if you consider yourself a lifetime learner and a change catalyst, this apprenticeship program is the opportunity you need to start building a worthwhile career.
Microsoft is a global developer and vendor of personal computer software products. Microsoft is also a leading provider of computer hardware and devices, cloud computing solutions, and ICT training services for clients across various industries. According to Statista, Microsoft has a 76% market share in the desktop operating system market as of 2022. StatCounter also revealed that Microsoft has a 29.1% market share in the global operating system market as of January 2023.
As of June 2022, Microsoft recorded 221,000 employees worldwide, and 122,000 are in the United States. Women comprise 30.7% of Microsoft’s global workforce, and 53.2% of its employees identify as racial and ethnic minorities. Microsoft’s corporate headquarters is in Redmond, Washington, with 122 subsidiaries worldwide. It has offices across 119 US cities and over 211 countries. In addition, Microsoft has operation centers in Ireland, the United States, and Singapore.
Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by college students and friends: Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who discovered an opportunity to create interpreter software for the Altair 8800, a personal computer, after seeing a popular electronics magazine. After witnessing a working model of the interpreter, MITS, the owner of Altair 8800, decided to sell the interpreter as Altair BASIC. The interpreter became the first product of their company, “Microcomputer Software.”
Shortly after, the product started raking in millions, and in 1979 the company was moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Bellevue, Washington. By 1980, the company had generated almost $30 million in revenue and opened its first international office in Japan. When IBM started planning to launch its first personal computer in 1981, the founders struck a deal with the tech giant to provide the PC’s operating system. On August 12, 1981, IBM launched its first personal computer (PC) with Microsoft’s 16-bit operating system, “MS-DOS 1.0”.
With the success of its operating system, the company set out to launch Microsoft Word in 1983. The company launched Microsoft Excel and its first Windows graphical interface two years later. However, the first version of Windows wasn’t as successful. On the 13th of March 1986, Microsoft went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MSFT” with an initial offering price of $21 and closed at $35. It sold 2.5 million shares and raised $61 million. The company was valued at $350 million following the IPO. By then, it had relocated to Redmond, Washington.
After acquiring Powerpoint from a company called, Forethought, Microsoft launched its productivity package in 1989. This package became its earliest version of the Office suite and was available across multiple platforms and operating systems. Over the next several years, the company continued to expand its product line. It launched Windows 3.0 on May 22, 1990, and released the first Xbox on November 15, 2001. Microsoft launched the Windows Server and the Microsoft Office System in 2003. It built the Bing engine in 2009 and launched the first surface laptop in 2012.
The company has 38 sub-organizations and has acquired 254 companies, including LinkedIn, Fungible, Xandr, and Ally.io. Iit’s latest investment in AI has In its 2022 annual report, Microsoft generated a collective revenue of $198,270,000,000 for the year ended 31st December 2022. Between 2022 and 2022, top brands like Forbes, Fast Company, RepTrak, and Glassdoor recognized Microsoft as one of the best companies to work for diverse workers.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Microsoft achieves its mission by staying committed to the following corporate values:
The following company values also guide Microsoft’s actions:
Microsoft has positioned itself as a facilitator of business and leisure activities. It develops, licenses, and supports individual and enterprise software and hardware products. Currently, the company has a diversified product and service portfolio. In its 2022 annual report, Microsoft revealed that it generates revenue from products and services offered in the following areas: cloud applications and infrastructure (Azure Arc. Azure for Operators, Azure IoT, Azure Digital Twins, and Microsoft Mesh), data and AI (Microsoft Intelligence Data Platform, Cosmos DB, Azure Synapse, Microsoft Purview, Azure OpenAI services),
Microsoft also facilitates digital and app innovation (GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Visual Studio, Azure PaaS services), business applications (Dynamics 365, Nuance Communications, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability), modern work (Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva), modern life (Windows 11, Surface Devices, and Microsoft 365), LinkedIn, security (Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Security Experts), search, advertising & news (Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Bing, Microsoft Start, Xandr and Netflix partnership), gaming (Xbox series, Xbox consoles, Xbox cloud gaming, and Xbox Game Pass subscription) through the acquisition of ZeniMax Media and Activision Blizzard.
According to Stackshare, Microsoft has 39 major technologies in its tech stack. The company uses 23 applications, data tools, six utilities, nine DevOps, and one business tool. Some of its applications and data tools include NGINX, C#, Ruby, Redis, React, Rails, and GraphQL. Microsoft utilities include Postman, CodePush, Azure Search, Azure Machine Le, ReactXP, and DMTK. Top Microsoft DevOps tools include GitHub, Docker, Visual Studio Co, Azure DevOps, HAProxy, and GVFS. And, of course, Microsoft uses Microsoft Teams.
The company launched Microsoft Leap in 2015 to give individuals without a four-year degree in computer science a chance to launch a career in technology. Girish Blabani, CVP of Azure Compute, and William Adams, Leap Co-founder & Technical Advisor to Microsoft’s CTO, birthed the original idea for the Microsoft Leap program out of the need to promote diversity and inclusion in Microsoft’s engineering workforce. Chun Lu, Leap Co-founder & Early Career Director at Microsoft, noted that the idea aligned with the company’s goal of upskilling and reskilling more non-traditional talent for tech roles.
To Microsoft, diversity comprises race, gender, background, and perspectives; as such, it modeled its apprenticeship to reflect that. In the United States, the apprenticeship program has expanded beyond Redmond, Washington, to Atlanta and the Republic of Ireland. It offers software engineering, technical program management, and product management. In addition, each apprentice has access to a program lead, a mentor, managers, and networking event opportunities.
This full-time program spans four months (16 weeks) and combines four weeks of immersive classroom learning led by Microsoft subject matter experts with 12 weeks of on-the-job training across cross-functional engineering teams, which ends with a project fair. Microsoft Leap apprentices work on real projects and deliverables designed by Microsoft engineering teams and sponsored by Microsoft enterprise partner companies.
The team members bring their expertise in streamlining the engineering processes and implementing innovative engineering concepts and best practices for products such as Microsoft Azure, Bing, Xbox, Microsoft 365, Mixed Reality, and Microsoft Teams.
Apprenticeship tracks change per cohort and location, depending on the business needs of Microsoft enterprise companies or vendors. In the United States, candidates should expect the pathways listed below.
These apprentices collaborate with product and program managers to build software solutions by applying engineering principles. A typical day for Leap engineering apprentices starts with a stand-up where they discover their tasks and core project. Typically, engineering apprentices write and review codebases. They also collaborate with cross-functional teams, like design and product management, to define product needs. In addition, Microsoft may hire other engineering roles for customer engineering, cybersecurity engineering, and technical support engineering.
A business program manager ensures product development processes align with the business needs. Technical program managers collaborate with the engineering team to design engineering solutions for technical issues. These professionals also analyze complex systems and architect solutions to identify and monitor the correction of defects.
Product managers collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive product development throughout the product cycle. They conduct data analysis and customer interviews to define product features, designs, and specifications according to customer needs. These professionals communicate the project's progress and project demands to stakeholders.
UX designers collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and deploy software and hardware products that optimize the user experience. Their tasks include researching, prototyping, testing, deploying, and maintaining products.
At the end of the 16-week program, all apprentices participate in an employment interview to transition to a full-time role at a Microsoft enterprise partner company or a Microsoft vendor. As of the start of 2022, 98% of all apprentices have secured jobs in the tech industry, and Microsoft enterprise partner companies have hired two-thirds.
While Microsoft acknowledges that participants earn a stipend during the period of the apprenticeship, it doesn't state the amount. However, according to 2023 estimates from Glassdoor, A Microsoft Leap apprentice earns an average of $63 per hour and $76,022 per year. This compensation covers the apprentice’s base pay of $64,522 and bonus pay of $11,500 for the same period.
Microsoft apprentices have access to vital corporate resources to improve their success rates. During the program, they also receive mentorships, professional development training, and coaching. In addition, you may also have access to health insurance, product discounts, lunch, transportation aid, and fitness programs.
Microsoft Apprenticeship Selection: How Are Cohorts Chosen?
The Microsoft Leap apprenticeship is open to all applicants, including career relaunchers, career switchers, community college graduates, University graduates, and more. A core requirement is that you’re a self-taught coder and have attended a coding bootcamp or academy. You should also have past work experience in any field, be a lifelong learner, and be passionate about launching a career in tech. Depending on your program track, experience using core technical tools and technologies may be required.
Apprentices can come from any ethnic or professional background and can be as old as 73 and as young as 19. The Microsoft Leap apprenticeship has expanded beyond North America to Ireland. The company has also opened a Microsoft Africa Development Center in Nigeria and Kenya.
Microsoft Apprenticeship Program Interview: Is the Microsoft Interview Hard?
You won’t find the Microsoft Leap interview process challenging if you’ve prepared ahead of it. The recruitment process starts with completing an online application. The application includes essay questions and questions about your work authorization and residency. You’ll also need your work experience, LinkedIn profile, pathway, availability, school credentials, certifications, resume, and portfolio. After the screening, the Microsoft Leap hiring team may send a declination letter or invitation to complete two 45-minute interviews with the hiring manager and members of the various program track teams.
These interviews measure your technical, collaborative, and problem-solving skills. Expect whiteboard questions about algorithms, string manipulation, and data structures. You should also prepare to answer behavioral questions about how you learned to code and how you handle work-related issues. After reviewing, the Microsoft Leap team will send out offers to those who scaled the interviews for the apprenticeship program.
For the first cohort in the United States, Microsoft recruited eight women as engineering apprentices. In 2018, the number grew to 37 apprentices in a cohort. In 2022, Microsoft Leap recruited eight apprentices into its first Ireland Cohort. By January 2023, Microsoft Leap welcomed 48 new apprentices into its Redmond and Atlanta cohorts.
Microsoft Apprenticeship Cohort Frequency: How Often is a Cohort Hired?
Microsoft Leap recruits multiple cohorts annually in the United States, Ireland, and Africa. In 2022, the Microsoft Leap application cycle for its Dublin, Ireland apprenticeship opened on the 25th of May and closed on June 15th, 2022. Atlanta and Ireland’s first cohorts began on the 30th of August and ended on the 16th of December, 2022.
In the same year, it opened its application cycle for the Redmond, WA, and Atlanta, GA cohorts on the 21st of September and closed on the 5th of October. The cohorts launched on the 17th of January and closed on the 5th of May, 2023. Microsoft Leap still needs to release the application dates for the 2023/24 period.
Microsoft is an excellent company to work for if you're passionate about making a difference in tech and acknowledge that you don't know it all but are ready to learn. According to employee reviews from Glassdoor, Microsoft has a 4.4 out of five-star rating for great benefits, collaborative colleagues, learning and development opportunities, DEI efforts, good work-life balance, and attractive compensation. Ninety percent of reviewers agree to recommend Microsoft to a friend, and 96% approve of the CEO.
The Microsoft Leap program is very competitive. Thousands of candidates apply to the program each year, and less than fifty of them are recruited. To increase your chances of getting into the program, build solid foundational skills in your preferred track through a coding bootcamp or academy. You should also learn how to communicate your interest in the program convincingly.
Do you get a job after Microsoft Leap?
There are no guarantees on transitioning to a full-time entry-level role after your apprenticeship because of how complex Microsoft's hiring needs are. However, you'll be allowed to interview and demonstrate why you're qualified for the full-time role. Graduating from Microsoft Leap increases your chances of landing a tech job in any prestigious company.
While filling out your apprenticeship application, you should expect questions about your experience in coding/programming and if you've previously held any tech-related role. You may also be asked to discuss your interest in the program and why you’re a good fit.
The Microsoft Careers page and The Official Microsoft Blog allow you to stay updated on the latest jobs, career paths, tech stack, employee initiatives, and stories about Microsoft and its enterprise partners.
You should visit the Microsoft DEI page to learn more about Microsoft's commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
You can get news about Microsoft apprenticeship programs from the Microsoft Leap Microsite. You should also follow Microsoft Leap on Twitter and Facebook to discover the application cycles for various countries.
If you don’t want to track and monitor the Microsoft apprenticeship program for yourself or are looking for support in an apprenticeship application, you can join apprenticeship.io to learn more and get support to land an apprenticeship program.
Learn more and sign up today.
