Getting paid today requires you to endure conflict in one of 3 ways:
1. The conflict of levelling up technically and consistently producing quality work
2. The conflict of having uncomfortable conversations with prospects, colleagues and juniors to achieve goals
......
We hired a new VP of Engineering who is obsessed with agile methodology.
He called a meeting on his first day and said we need to transition to 2-week development sprints.
He wanted daily stand-ups, retrospective boards, and continuous deployment pipelines.
He wanted us to actually write new code.
I realized immediately that he was an existential threat to my lifestyle.
I let him finish his impassioned speech about workflow velocity.
Then I stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and drew a single horizontal line.
I told him agile sprints are a localized solution for a localized mindset.
I said our infrastructure operates on a Zenith Release Cycle.
He asked what a Zenith Release Cycle was.
I told him it's a holistic, macro-stabilization framework where we observe the system in a state of prolonged stasis.
By not touching the code for 18 months, we allow the legacy dependencies to organically settle.
I told him that deploying bi-weekly updates creates micro-abrasions in our database architecture.
I used the phrase chronological data scarring.
The CEO was in the room and audibly gasped.
He told the new VP that we can't risk chronological data scarring just to satisfy a trendy tech buzzword.
The VP looked at me like I'd just invented a new color.
He was completely paralyzed by the sheer density of my fabricated jargon.
He quietly agreed to adopt the Zenith Release Cycle.
We're officially scheduled to deploy our next update in the third quarter of 2027.
I spent the rest of the afternoon buying things I don't need on Amazon.
Agile is a disease invented by people who want to be punished for their salary.
I refuse to participate in my own suffering.
it is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you are going to achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. the only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself.