Microsoft

Great work-life balance: my team had flexible work hours.

Good management: at my time at Microsoft, my supervisor and mentor were very approachable.

They spoil interns: they make interning at Microsoft as much a social experience as a job, with the intended purpose of getting interns to come back full time.

• Lots of work with legacy systems: my team worked a fair amount with legacy code, which was tedious and uninteresting.

• Hard to feel motivated: given the size of the company, it is easy on many of the teams to feel that the work you are doing has little impact.

Give interns a better description of their jobs before they are hired. My biggest problem with Microsoft was that, as an incoming intern, management refused to detail what team I would be working with before I accepted the offer, which resulted in me working on a project I did not enjoy.