Maybe it's that half of my family are politicians/lawyers, many of them leaning towards high-performing psychopathy and observing their behavior since being a child, their attempts to control me, expressing frustration I figured out their game and deny them, and then observing the same at work with those "ambitious persons", thinking anyone that does work is an idiot and should be handled like a child in a kindergarten, has something to do with me being hyperaware of what is going on around me.
Frankly, one of my favorite things in the office was to emit bubbles of incomplete information to individual persons and observe who gets to know that piece of information, mapping alliances at work - they were oblivious of being tested, always triumphant they knew better and it was just fun to simulate a clueless person on my side just to understand how did they exactly operate. Try it, it's fun and a quite harmless "game people play".
That second paragraph makes it sound like you picked up some of those psychopathic tendencies. It doesn't seem healthy to play those types of games with people, as harmless as it may be.
Yes, the reality of life is that it's not a meritocracy or even within a stone's throw of it. There's a fine line between acknowledging the reality of it and succumbing to it. The abyss gazes also.
The comments you wrote in this thread really hit me. I truly appreciate your writing them down, and as other posters have said, writing a blog post about this would be really helpful to us. What you're saying is true. No one cares about the tech.
Frankly, one of my favorite things in the office was to emit bubbles of incomplete information to individual persons and observe who gets to know that piece of information, mapping alliances at work - they were oblivious of being tested, always triumphant they knew better and it was just fun to simulate a clueless person on my side just to understand how did they exactly operate. Try it, it's fun and a quite harmless "game people play".