They pay well and if you leave the HN/Reddit bubble, there are CS students out there (that are pretty smart) that really would LOVE to have jobs at Microsoft/Facebook/Yahoo/ (insert any company unpopular on HN here).
Graduating CS student here, Google is my dream job. I would also be exceedingly happy to work at any of the following: Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Amazon, Intel, etc.
Starting my own startup sounds cool and all but it would be too much work for me and I just because I don't agree 100% with a companies policies doesn't make them an undesirable workplace.
Mainly the prestige but all four of those are good points. There aren't many places where you have an opportunity to do things for the sake of doing them, most places either don't value technology or don't have to budget to investigate new and interesting technology. I love the place I currently work and love the people I work with, however I don't want to be doing line of business crud apps forever. If I could get a good wage in academia I would but it seems much less likely than getting a job at one of those companies I listed.
From my outsider perspective, I don't even keep track of these things much:
* Amazon seems to have a reputation for burning employees out.
* IBM seems quite stagnant. They're basically a huge consulting/services company, not very interesting.
* No one really thinks Microsoft can innovate anymore. They're pretty much coasting on Windows and Office, and that's been eroding for a long time. They don't seem to be able to execute anything successfully. Do you know anyone with a Windows phone? Remember the Zune? Do you search with Bing? What are they doing? Desperately trying to do anything to stay relevant, and failing badly. They're on the IBM lifecycle path, but they're not yet just a large services/consulting company. They're still trying to build products, and they just suck. What are your associations with Microsoft right now? When I think of Apple, I think of the iphone/ipod/itunes. When I think of Microsoft, I think of the Windows 8 interface.
One fellow student of mine wanted to work at microsoft so she could develop the next (I forget exactly) which was never developed at MS, they just bought a little startup, slapped the MS name and logo on it, marked the price way up, and went into maint mode (which is really boring).
She genuinely thought they innovate internally rather than thru purchasing startups (aka outsourced R+D)
Some people specifically want to do maint mode work, but she very specifically wanted to develop "new products" like an example I know was merely a turnkey purchased startup.
Starting my own startup sounds cool and all but it would be too much work for me and I just because I don't agree 100% with a companies policies doesn't make them an undesirable workplace.