Basically because every time this happens the burden of debt is passed towards the tax payers. They just built a long toll lane in my city in what was a 2 lane highway. Adding another lane or two would have alleviated traffic immensely. The company that built it owns all profits for approx 50 years. What could have been a 5 lane highway is still two except now you have the option of paying a ridiculous amount of money to not have to deal with the traffic. This is money that could have been spent on improving the city’s other methods of transportation, trains, bicycles, etc.

It doesn’t affect me personally. I ride a motorcycle every day. It’s just painful to see how private interests are almost never in line with what’s best for constituents

+1 on the book idea. Sounds like a delightful read. I have a similar philosophy as well that’s worked for me. I’ve never once cared about getting credit or props, I make my boss/team look like geniuses. That naturally tends to reward you as well. Great individual contributors are actually pretty rare. Out of hundreds of engineers I’ve worked with closely, only a few were brilliant in the way you described.

If you’re looking for related reading, perhaps for inspiration, there’s a great book called

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.

I highly recommend it.

I work as an engineer for a huge financial company, so I relate. I was a scrappy upstart who worked himself through the lowest tiers of my industry towards the top. I’m also neurodivergent.

I can speak on for days about how bosses don’t care who’s doing the work as long as it gets done.

As a top performer, you’re likely to feel that people should perform at the standards you set, and your natural first instinct is probably to try to train and educate your coworkers. You soon realize that they either don’t give a shit or they’re offended that you’re giving them advice. No problem, we live in a hierarchical society, so you tell your boss about the problems you face, they’ll have your back, right? Wrong. You’re rocking the boat, and the boss’ job is to keep the boat afloat.

Now, instead of rocking the boat, you start to wonder if you there’s a way you can change the current of the water so the boat goes in the proper direction. That’s where wisdom and skill meet. There’s an incredible amount of depth involved in influencing people and change. I wish it wasn’t the way of the world, but it is. Being brilliant is only half the battle.

True true

They can be pretty common for certain people. I’ve dealt with hemorrhoids since I was 20, my dad also started getting them pretty young too. They tend to “flare up” if you eat food that irritates them. For me it’s something that I deal with every few months or so. When I get them, I gotta squirt a tube of ointment up my ass and they’re usually gone the next day. It’s a very humbling experience. I came as a poor migrant, no college education and through will and determination I became a self taught engineer about to turn 30 who makes six figures, and I occasionally have to squirt a tube of preparation H ointment up my ass.

RIP Aaron Swartz.