Maybe “Fire in the Valley“? I learned to program in the mid-1980s and learned about the culture from dozens of magazines that were published contemporaneously. I didn’t live in Silicon Valley and thought I had pretty much missed the boat so I spent thousands a year in early 1990s dollars to keep up. Then I got to move to Redmond, Washington and actually live it. Working with people I had literally read about was every bit as good as I hoped.

Not Microsoft but an enjoyable account from that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

Agreed, that is a good portrait of what it was like

Read it twice and really envy these guys! Nowadays there is far less such work and they almost all requre doctors.

that was a good one, although they had a really intense time.

"pinball"

hackers: heroes of the computer revolution

by Steven Levy.

I think he also wrote some of the other well known books, maybe including fire in the valley. need to check.

He is a journalist, so the book is sure to be embellished to sound good, but a cool read nonetheless, IMO.

Dead to rights. Much of the dialogue sounds like Steven Levy.

No, I didn't write Fire in the Valley, but did write some other books. I appreciate that you felt Hackers was a cool read. But whether you believe me or not, the default for real journalists is NOT embellishing, but doing reporting to get to the nearest thing to truth. Not all writers do that (some "nonfiction" authors are frank about making up dialogue, and even moving the timeline) but to me and the vast majority of my peers, nonfiction means just that.

Byte magazine is also a really interesting read: https://archive.org/details/BYTE-MAGAZINE-COMPLETE

Brian Kernighan's "Unix: A History and a Memoir" is an excellent read on the computer systems achievements of the labs through the eyes of someone who was at the center of it all.