Interesting that you mention that. When I was back in university (early 2000s) there were a few "big companies" to work for. If you cared about having the perks, the money and a cool office, you wanted to work for Microsoft. If you were more of a reclusive neckbeard with a love for the more arcane aspects of computing and networking (like I was), you wanted to work for Sun. It was seen as the place where you'd be free to work on cool research projects rather than (god forbid!) consumer software. That's where the luminaries were.

Of course, even back then nobody wanted to work for IBM or HP. Heh.