And? I've allegedly been a fairly reasonable, compassionate, high integrity individual my entire workimg life, and likely experienced more abuse than I'm even consciously keeping track of anymore. I've ensured the crown jewels of businesses that make orders of magnitude more money in a year than I will in a lifetime operate smoothly and to spec, in spite of disinterested/misaligned implementers and stakeholders contributions to crippling the system under scrutiny as a whole. I'm measuring the time I've been doing it in decades now. I'm not going to stop doing all of that just because maybe, just possibly someone might get one up on me. Especially now. You don't have the luxury of common spaces to ensure your team of intimidators or designated social engineers/legal entanglement minimization specialists are there to muscle the riff raff out the door so you can bring in the next cog. Hell, you can't even guarantee you get your equipment back right now.

We're all human beings, and we're all trying to make a difference, and do something that matters. If you start looking at people as a line item in a ledger, or an audit sheet, you lose sight of what is really important. We're all here whether we like it or not for the time being, and that isn't going to change. I've seen some of the cases where it doesn't work out, but it doesn't mean that I'm justified in making it work out any less favorably by dehumanizing someone. That simply isn't good business. Business, contrary to popular belief, is personal. What we do matters. Otherwise, we wouldn't all be doing it every day. Sociopathy being overrepresented in executive and management echelons notwithstanding. Shell games of corporate and brand identity notwithstanding. In fact both those things make the personal aspect all the more important. If you can't steer your company humanely, you'll never really be pick up that spark that leads to global recognition, and even if you do, odds are in the long run you squander it on holding the expectation bar lower for everyone else.

Maybe I'm young and naive, but I've still been around the block more than once, and it is amazing how much I've been able to accomplish without treading on other folks. In fact, the people I've been entrusted with leading to accomplish good things do much better at doing so when they aren't worrying about getting stabbed in the back.

I'm not giving up on it. I don't know what you've been through, but I know what I have been through. As a knowledge worker, my mental state is my number one most important tool, and people and organizations that have jeopardized it out of some misguided notion of professional disinterest are all companies I refuse to do any business witb ever again. I'll take the risks inherent with being what I judge to be a decent human being and businessperson, and you'll take yours, and we'll both go our own ways into the market, and we'll both probably end up with a lot of stories the other hadn't even been in a place to imagine.

Maybe we'll even run into each other at a convention or something again once things settle down again and recall this, and have a good laugh over it.

No hard feelings, just a difference of opinion and philosophy really. I will not stop looking for ways to get everyone where they can do the most good. That to me, is the single greatest kindness I have been shown by the people I'm most grateful for having shared a lifetime with, and I fully intend to pay it forward, because I have seen no greater value creation methodology than that.