I found it really amusing that Ballmer threw a fit when one of their engineers told him that he is going to work for google. That was back in 2004. I guess they have learned their lesson, and now they simply sue people that want to do the same.
Here is a newsflash Ballmer – if you make it a company policy not to be evil, you win over allot of people. Then, even if you do some little evil things you will have a legion of geeks defending you. Google is not perfect, but we love it anyway – because it does not try to rape us in the buttox at every opportunity.
This is how bad it is. I know allot of people who would have serious moral objections working for Microsoft. It’s like working for a tabaco company – some people would never do it despite the money. I actually did a gig promoting MS products at one time. It was done by a 3rd party marketing company – so I was never employed by MS. I got lots of free books, software and gadgets – but I actually felt dirty doing it. You live, you learn. I would never go to work for MS. Besides, they would never let me run kubuntu on my laptop :P