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It sounds like she was surprised by not getting an offer. That's not OK and the responsibility clearly lies with her manager for the failure to communicate this earlier in her internship.

From reading her blog, it seems like she's taking this in stride, and I hope she takes what was good from her experience at Microsoft and finds a way to apply it to her next adventure.

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Unfortunately a lot of managers tend to give continuous positive feedback until the big review, regardless of actual performance. I am not sure why they do this. It is a misunderstanding of the purpose of feedback in the first place.

Because giving negative feedback is hard and uncomfortable and a skill that many people never master. It doesn't help that corporate training on the subject amounts to extremely generic and basic advice one could think up on the spot. Nothing really insightful.

Perhaps it’s because the optimal ratio is believed to be five units of praise per unit of constructive criticism: https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

I wouldn’t be surprised if this backfires with certain types of people.

The team leader clearly said they wanted someone who knew more about wifi drivers.

Being a manager is a difficult and thankless task.

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