"I've never done waterfall" or "we specified everything (on paper! millennials don't read amirite) before we built it", which is it?
There's a whole lot of generalizing from personal experience to "universal truths" that simply aren't universal. or even truths? For instance, there are certainly some teams that get value out of code reviews.
Yes, that's correct, I've never done waterfall either. By definition [1] "The waterfall model has, at least, five to seven phases that follow in strict linear order, where a phase can’t begin until the previous phase has been completed." (emphasis mine) - we never did that, and I never heard of anybody following that model. All these steps has to overlap - it is not possible to write good requirements without having at least draft design etc - and they surely did.
Were you “there” though? I wasn’t so genuinely curious if his recollection reflects reality.
EDIT: they responded to another parent comment I created and were definitely working at Microsoft during the period.