Of course you can make statements about groups. In a different context, most of the people here agreed with this:
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
I feel safe suggesting this, because they'd never do it.
Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't
realize how much they suck. They still think they can
write software in house. Maybe they can, by the standards
of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years
ago.
That was 2007. A generalization about a group of people's ability to write software, which arose from observation of their company's products and behavior. If that's not legitimate, I suppose all must have prizes.
Within every large enough group there will be individuals that you'd be more than happy to hire.
What most people here agree with does not change the facts.
Microsoft as a company may suck (and even that depends on your viewpoint, I would agree with that statement but plenty of people do not and they may have just as much reason to believe their opinions as I do) but that does not automatically translate into 'everybody that works at microsoft sucks'.
Oh, and they're still one of the largest software companies and one of the largest companies in general. There's bound to be interesting work and interesting people within its walls.
