[rlu]

I beg to differ. This is the thing that people misunderstand about Microsoft.

When you work at Microsoft you don't just "work at Microsoft". You work for a TEAM in Microsoft. For example, last year I was an intern on Word. The Word client team consists of maybe ~30 people. You don't feel like you're working with 40k people, but instead a small group of around 30. And you could see how it can become even more granular when you take dev/test/pm disciplines into account.

We have lunch together, we go out after work together, we play board games after work, we do all sorts of fun things together.

It may be fair to say that a giant company should not have a start up culture, though I would find it ludicrous to say that ~teams~ within big companies should not have a start up culture.

* Caveat: Because Microsoft is so big, you'll find that cultures can vary between teams. For example, Bing is rumored to have one of the worst cultures in the company. A culture of excessive work, excessive competition, and overall unpleasant times and people.

[philwelch]

Sure, but don't you have to deal with politics and policies from the rest of the company, or occasionally interface with bureaucrats from other departments, other buildings even? Working in a team of 30 people at a big company is never anything like working in a company of 30 people.

[rlu]

Oh, I agree. I don't think working here is like working at a startup (in some good ways and some bad ways). I just thought that it was unfair to say that only startups are allowed to have "intimacy".