This Atlantic article by James Fallows describes what he learned about Microsoft culture during a six month stint helping to design Word. Summary points: The people are nice, the pace is slow, the culture is meeting-centric, the planning process is radically “bottom-up” and surprisingly nonpolitical, people do talk about money (as in having lots of it), it is like the military (in a good way), and they understand exactly who their most important customers are. It’s a fascinating look inside the enclave. And it’s definitely an outsider non-geek viewpoint — I mean, I don’t see anything strange about rigging up a camera so you can see what your cats are doing while you’re at work! (thank you Landon)