Having worked at Microsoft in their headquarters in Redmond, I have to agree with the unhealthiness of being stuck in a work community all the time. I was dazzled by MS for the first several months, it was my first job out of college, there were tons of shiny things and fringe benefits, they rented out entire sports stadiums for company meetings, they had clubs for salsa and ballroom dance just like at school, etc. But it was very disconnected from Seattle or even the rest of the world. Microsoft practically ran Redmond and Bellevue, to the point where it programmed their stop-lights. I was there for a couple years and everyone I knew was a Microsoft employee or a spouse or family member of a Microsoft employee (many of whom were also Microsoft employees). I was also dating a Microsoft contractor I met through one of those work-related clubs. It started to drive me nuts, and it was my major reason for leaving MS. I don't think I could ever do that again, barring otherwise dire circumstances.

I later worked at a Google satellite office in Cambridge, and while I left for other reasons, it did not have the all-encompassing life capture that the MS HQ did, not because of any company policy (since Google has a similar HQ) but because I was not physically trapped in a company town. I imagine I would have had a better time at MS had I worked in their Cambridge satellite instead.