Until ...

My level and above always experience change and the change has almost always been for the better.

Until the building blocks of the systems they build are business units.

When you're writing the code, it will do whatever you can imagine.

When you're creating the culture, the people will do whatever you can convince them is in their interest.

When you're building a company, every other company is actively working against you. It's not about being "right" or having a "better" solution. It's about winning a non-linear rigged game. Partners are just competitors with a common interest, or potential mergers where the C suite hasn't worked out yet who stays and who goes.

When you're at the level where you need to lobby in DC, because the law is what you're fighting, you're going to look like every other oligarch or robber baron.

The second you are at the level of p&l, profit and loss, those imaginary building blocks are very real.

When I design systems that include people's jobs. How many people will be required to run the system for the next 3 years during the contract? Okay. Let's go find them, hire them, train them and make sure they get along with everybody else. Sometimes they didn't and had to be removed.

How much profit are we making during this contract and did it actually cover those people's jobs 2 years in? No? Can we use them in another department? No? Can we find a job for them anywhere else? Almost always. Hey, so and so, you're having difficulty here, and I hear this guy over there would really like to hire you. Wouldn't you like that job? No? We are having financial difficulties here and your job is in danger, wouldn't you really like that job?

Yes!

Sometimes that didn't always work out. But we tried. Sometimes. There is absolutely no other job to give them. They weren't working out for real reasons. Then it was my job to get rid of them.

Sometimes the entire division was in jeopardy based on a political, not technical decision. It was still my job to deal with it.

So yes, that moment of crossing from the arbitrary building blocks of a technical system that is self-contained except for data and electricity is vastly different from where I played.

And yes, our lawyers told me that I needed to print out all my code so we can copyright it all and then patent it and then go attack our competitors. I slow walked that one. Oops, it never got done.

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