Comment by jamestimmins

I don't think this is fair. In part, because valuations are so high today, but 2004 was totally different. This was shortly after the bubble burst. An enormous number of people went to interesting startups and lost their jobs/equity when the companies went under. Nowadays, startups have been de-risked quite a bit and there's obviously a lot of money if you operate well, but at the time, a career in Microsoft probably seemed extremely rational.