[cxr]

> people you’ve worked with for decades

It's more an instance of "place where one has worked". Someone in that position at SAS simply doesn't have the experience to confirm or deny the sorts of things the article gets into. Not to equate being a software engineering manager with being a janitor, but it is, on some level, like asking a janitor what was really going on at Enron just because they were in the same building.