I’m dumb about it. I don’t have a scheme, I don’t have a hidden agenda, I don’t have ulterior motives… I’ve got what I think is great engineering (divorced from what the customer or business wants in the short term) and I just diligently try to make that happen. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve always got the long term health of the system (and fairness to the workers next to me ) in mind. I say the same thing to everyone, I’m open and honest, and I get wrecked every time I try to execute any strategy that doesn’t accidentally align with something a VP wants.

Ya’ll are so much better at this it’s scary. I can’t really read when I’m being lied to in the moment, I usually naively believe that support I’m getting is because my ideas are good, or that management has the same view of the collective good that I do.

I spent a while in the marines as an enlisted man, lower NCO. There is no politics and people next to you have to trust each other with their lives. I never really made the turn to what the world is outside of that, I’ve always struggled with it.

I learned not to try. Ya’ll can do politics. I’ll write one pagers and wait for my chances to make things better.