> dinged on a performance review for negatively comparing their kernel... engineers are not allowed to try or even talk about it
I wonder if it was possibly not that you compared the kernels but rather how you chose to express the comparison. For example this bit makes me think you possibly expressed your opinion combatively:
> a dogshit IO scheduler
Perhaps you were more polite in your day-to-day, I don't know. But your language here makes me wonder.
You seem to be extrapolating a lot from a single turn of phrase but the fact remains that while Apple's kernel is satisfactory, it's not really considered best of bread in anything other than maybe dtrace support.
So I'm sorry I offended you with my salty language but the evidence suggests I'm far from the only one that went ignored at Apple.
Some people seem unaware that others take issue with how they communicate and not what they communicate
the way you are responding to some one who asked you a pretty mild question (assuming they were personally offended rather than asking about a potential communication issue) suggests there is some validity here.
I wonder if it was possibly not that you compared the kernels but rather how you chose to express the comparison. For example this bit makes me think you possibly expressed your opinion combatively:
> a dogshit IO scheduler
Perhaps you were more polite in your day-to-day, I don't know. But your language here makes me wonder.