Last week, the company I work for flew all of their employees to Phoenix. We had meetings, and parties, big buses taking us to excursions and dinners, and we talked about work, the upcoming year, how we were all going to be different, how we were all going to be better than the year before. They gave us nice rooms. The hotel property was gigantic. I sat in the lobby reading Carl Phillips. Only put it down when people approached me to say hello.
Twenty years ago, this kind of experience would have felt like the epitome of success. And it did. I remember my first time going to a company retreat and how special it felt. To be a part of something bigger. To be a recognized cog in the machine. Lanyard around my neck like a yolk. But hey, that's why there's free drinks. Don't think about it too much.
Occasionally, someone would ask about my poetry. It's a curious thing, I guess—to have someone in engineering leadership who is rumored to have another life separate from the company mission. To google their name and see poems and not posts about code or engineering best practices or hot takes about AI and crypto or how we should all—yes, continue to be thankful that our lives are a little less shitty than everyone else's lives, simply because we still have jobs that pay real money. Even you. You can be like us. You just need to work hard on that leetcode and fork out that subscription money for Cursor or CoPilot or Claude. What is money, if not an investment into your future? Believe the myths. And smile. That's important. Be thankful.
The last time I was on an interview loop, I think that was a lot of the difficulty. I could see it in my face staring back at me from the zoom. The wearing thin. The tiredness. The wisdom that comes in knowing the promises of late-stage capitalism are all horseshit. The interviewer parroting the company's myths: we're all in this together. We're mission-driven.
