I don't really feel sorry for the employees. There's this fascination between geeks to work at one of these "prestigious" companies, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. yet at the end of they day you are burning all your time, effort, essentially your life, to make a few guys rich.
They pay you enough to keep you happy, give you a few "interesting" problems to work on if you're lucky, maybe a couple of perks at the office. Why are you selling your soul to these guys in the first place? I just don't get why you'd be interested in making someone else rich for some geek-cred.