That's a great question! I didn't mean to imply that we absolutely couldn't have used symbols -- the answer is just because he was able to figure it out without them and it was less effort to try without first.

Office and Windows are different teams and units, so one dev on one team typically wouldn't have access to all of the symbol info for the codebase of the other. Setting that up takes some hoop-jumping, so he tried without and ended up figuring things out just fine over a few hours.

What I wanted to demonstrate was that in that moment all he had available was shit, and he still managed to push the castle higher.

Wow, I see.

I must admit, I do very much wonder what kind of environment Microsoft would be if teams were less segregated. I found http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w... in the comments, which seems to hint at the same sort of theme somewhat - particularly the bit about contributing to teams other than your own. There's a strong notion of isolation.

This is just thinking out loud, a response is not required. Everywhere has pros and cons. I'm (even with all this moping) actually less hesitant about MS as a whole than the rest of FAANG (except for N, which I also don't see a problem with) - not because of the whole "new MS" thing, or GH, but because everyone else seems to have fewer scruples than I consider to be a viable baseline. So there's that. :)

It's just kind of sad to see these kinds of inefficiencies, and it would be cool to eliminate them. Of course, it'd unleash organizational chaos for a while, but of course it would be totally worth it.