I too had a great time during my internship at Microsoft. I'll never forget the sense of adventure I felt moving across the country to work in a team that made

I too had a great time during my internship at Microsoft. I'll never forget the sense of adventure I felt moving across the country to work in a team that made news headlines and impacted millions of people. Working there full-time I found to be much different. The review system is a competition between peers, and it creates an environment that is at times hostile and at times theatrical. Instead of focusing on technical/product successes people were concerned with "visibility" from their higher ups. Because of this competition for good visibility, office politics dominated the promotion process. People would take credit for other's work and position themselves to dodge accountability for mistakes. In consequence, many (but not all) of the people who were promoted into management were people I didn't want to work for. The worst manager I had there avoided talking about anything technical and was strictly interested in deadlines and, of course, his own visibility. To indicate his disinterest to his direct reports whenever someone began to discuss an issue in technical detail he would fake a loud and obnoxious yawn. Other managers I interacted with were better, but people like that who would "manage up" seemed to keep getting promoted. Disclaimer: I work at Google now.