Company: Microsoft
Date: 2014-06-10
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Being a TAM in Fargo is a nightmare
Pros: Nothing I could think of other than the ability to work from home one day every week, but nowadays most companies adopt this work-life strategy
Cons: I worked in the Core team for a little over a year and couldn't stay longer. I'm still questioning the benefit of a TAM for businesses unless they are large-scale companies. Core TAMs deal with small accounts, and pretty much 99% of the things they do are remote. You're asked to grow accounts and get surveys filled out while having minimal interaction with your customers. The team of people I worked with wasn't all that great. The manager sucked. Add to that the pain of living in a city like Fargo. MS' cafeteria seems to repeat the same kinds of food over and over. There aren't many career growth options in Fargo, especially if you are in the Core team. If you are lucky, you can get a TAM role outside of ND. If you aren't, you should be looking for opportunities elsewhere. Pay wasn't that great either. Most job responsibilities of a Core TAM are redundant.  If you are a customer, you could easily talk to support engineers without looping in your TAM. Other tasks can be easily automated with software.