Obviously I cannot know everyone working for Microsoft. But I do know few people. Also, since I would never work for Microsoft, at the times I spent many years working for the same employer and either wanted to practice interviewing because I thought I might be headed for the door soon, or just to keep things fresh, I'd apply for jobs with Microsoft.

And invariably I'd hit the most bonedeaded interviewers I'd ever talk to. Arrogance is common to all interviewers in the tech giants, Microsoft is no exception of course. But in the context of glaring lack of any kind of ability, arrogance hits a lot harder...

What also stands out is that programmers working for other companies would typically know something about the platform their company didn't use. Like, if you talk to a person at Google RSE department, they'd still know something about how things are on MacOS or on MS Windows. Microsoft programmers are completely oblivious to anything outside Microsoft. They believe that whatever garbage they came up with is the best thing there is never trying alternatives. But, in rare cases when they do, their knowledge is very distorted and superficial.

Here's a real case of someone who worked for Microsoft for about ten years and branded himself a "visual C++ programmer". This guy started about the same time with me in a company which was transitioning from a bunch of Windows tools to Linux. Part of the transition was to move away Perforce and to Git. It was the time when even small companies would self-host Git, and the typical way to do that was to create Linux users on the server hosting Git repo and give programmers SSH access to it.

The sysadmin there was new to Linux, but we were kind of friends, especially since I had more Linux experience, so he'd come and chat with me about his job. One evening he comes to me and starts asking about how'd I set up Wine. Intrigued by why he'd need that... soon I discover that the "visual C++ programmer" guy requested that the sysadmin install an FTP client on the server, so that he can access Git repo... and that FTP client has to be some Windows-only junk, and so the sysadmin though that maybe it would run on Wine.

It was so many stupid things and of such magnitude all at once... I almost had a spasm laughing. And that's, basically, how my experience with Windows programmers usually went. I never had a moment of "hey, this guy may be OK, not like the others" or anything close. Somehow it was always bizarrely otherworldly comedically stupid.