I know Peter Zatko (mudge) professionaly (having spoken at computer security conferences and worked at more than one company that also worked with him), and personally (to an extent, hung out and talked at aforementioned security conferences, talked on irc And email in the good old days of #hack and bugtraq, and have several friends in common, was extremely impressed talking to him about how to disclose a bug I and the l0pht had independently discovered back in the day), and reputationally (the guy demanded, rightfully, a ton of respect amongst peers back then and now). I have a very hard time with this characterization.

More (content inside the brackets than) out!

But at least the most important part is right (the brackets are correctly balanced.

Demanded or commanded?

Fair enough, good insight

It seems extremely unfair. Rather than focusing on the content, you're criticizing tone. It comes off as a structured tactic, given that famous image of Mudge with unkempt hair in a suit sitting before Congress, intended to draw attention away from his words and onto his rough edges. It's an ad hominem attack of a particularly cheap variety.

What sounds immature, unprofessional, and out of depth is Agrawal's mass e-mail tarnishing Zatko's reputation, a tactic that your post seems to repeat from a different angle.

I'd rather have the theory of general relativity written in crayon, than the most beautiful calligraphic illustration of nonsense. Wouldn't you?

I'm criticizing the content. The first 20 pages are... bad.

I should have used the word "seem" rather than "sound" - "sound" does make it seem like I'm criticizing tone.

>I'm criticizing the content.

With all due respect, no you aren't. There isn't any criticism of the actual content in your post. It's all critiquing the tone - what style he used when writing, who you think he thinks his audience is, how informal his phrasing is. None of that has ANYTHING to do with content, it's all about form.

You might have incorrectly attributed a post/comment to me. There is no criticism of tone in my post. Nothing about style, audience, formality.

My comment is based on the following:

Much of the first 15-20 pages are complaints about the company optimizing and incentivizing what he believes to be the wrong metric. There is nothing illegal about it. Twitter are clear about it, shareholders know what they are trying to do. He's naive if he thinks it's a legal issue. It's probably not even a moral or business issue - if raw bot count becomes a user experience problem, it will cause mDAU to drop.

He appears unprofessional in his constant wanting to go to the board - he was a security lead, it's not his place to go to the board. He reported to a guy who reported to a guy who reported to the board.