It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
Having just mentioned Bryan Lunduke from Microsoft abusing everyone - managing to upset people both on the "left" and on the "right" (because of his tactics), let's discuss why I never responded to him, even when he had attempted to contact me.
In a nutshell, to put it bluntly, Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person". He's antisocial and he would hurt anyone, even people who wrongly assumed he'd be loyal to them. One day he might viciously attack RMS; then the next day he pretends to protect RMS. I know those types of people; I keep a good distance and stay away - well away from them. Erratic behaviour always results in bad outcomes. It's like trying to get along with a bipolar colleague. There's a reason why many people go silent (even large crowds) when a crazy person approaches; they don't want to attract attention and become a target.
That sort of approach does not tackle the problem though. Unlike many sites, we've long spoken (candidly and openly) about the Lunduke problem. He claims to be a coder, but he hasn't written any meaningful programs in well over a decade. He makes fun of "vibe coding", but what code does he write? To be clear, vibe coding is not coding. It's like calling autotune "making music", "composing" etc*. But he's making fun of coding or poking 'vibe coders' [sic] while acting like an infantile brat and interjecting racist politics into technical discussions (where politics aren't needed at all and none should be brought up). Microsoft wants to play politics, averting technical matters**. Once politics are introduced comes a giant CoC and people get banned, never mind if their technical stance makes perfect sense.
There are truisms, sure, even some inconvenient ones. For instance, it seems like Microsoft is already rushing to replace its engineers with south Asians who work longer for a lower salary. It's not hearsay, it is a verified fact and the mainstream media nonchalantly says it this weekend [1, 2]. There's official data that supports it. But we have to be careful not to cover it "too much" or get a stigma of "racism". Because truth is sometimes "racist". But unlike Microsoft Lunduke, we won't go out of our ways to make racially-offensive jokes. That's just his style. He takes pride in being racist. We showed some examples of his flame-baiting (targeting groups) tweets yesterday. He cannot help himself. He thinks it's "funny".
To me, Lunduke always seems like nuclear waste from Microsoft. He never reformed. He always persisted and shovelled in lots and lots of crap. For instance, you can raise legitimate scandals/issues in the Linux Foundation; then he comes along calling it a "vaccine company" and telling people the issue is vaccination itself.
Regarding former Microsoft staff, some of them became whistleblowers and sources to us. I don't want to generalise*** . This past week Microsoft made enough tears to fill up a barrel, but even if just 1% of them will become disgruntled leakers, that's about 100 people last week or almost 290 people so far this year. They'll leak material and information not only to us; if they leak it to another site, then we can pick that up from there. That means Microsoft cannot keep secrets. No secrets means bad PR/optics.
Don't look for constructive criticism of things like Wayland at the Lunduke site or social control media accounts. He just poisons whatever he touches, staining the reputation of anybody else who criticises the same things he does (irrespective of him). █
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* And "French fries" in Burger King are not 'cuisine', they're sweatshop staff running on timer/s. Press here, press there, pour something out of a plastic bag, wait for beep beep beep... (I should know, I worked there when I was about 16). Obesity for the most part is a symptom of bad diet, not too much food. That also says a lot about quality of work when "junk" is seen as more profitable through "affordability". With mediocrity or junk code planes will fall down from the sky... and then we'll ask why. After paying $9 per hour for coding jobs. You want slop for code ("vibe coding")? Good luck. Just don't run that code on a plane. As IBM staff puts it, if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys (yes, there is an offensive racist connotation).
** Microsoft software used to be called "SLOPWARE" even before it used slop (LLM junk) for code. Now it's literally correct and adequate to call it "SLOPWARE".
*** The unsaid part: Microsoft left out there, unemployed, a lot of 'toxic waste' of staff. Wherever they go next, it poses a risk (e.g. attempts to impose AD, Azure, C# etc. on colleagues). To be clear, it's not a new problem but its magnitude grows when Microsoft lays off about 29,000 people in 6 months. If those people cannot find a job that matches their 'skills', then they might find some job onto which they'll unload Microsoft... 'skills'.