If I look back at my previous posts, it probably sounds like my current job is slightly better than contracting the plague. Those are the bad days. But as I often say, we humans are wired to obsess over the negative, letting the positive moments drift by without giving them their due.

Today, it struck me that I need to capture the good aspects of my current situation.

By typical Vader luck, somehow, someway, I don’t really have a boss. This is a massive win. I’ve spoken to a “boss” one-on-one maybe five or six times in 12 months. And that includes four different people. My solid-line manager has rotated three times (including one temp), and the person I’m dotted to simply ignores me.

Why is this a good thing? No talk means no actions irrelevant to what I do. No talk means no politics. No talk means I define what matters to my group. It means I run my day-to-day. I’ve reached a point where I need this low-touch environment. When I have a manager who wants to be over-involved, I usually start looking for the exit. I’m finished with being told what to do.

This role is “smaller” than my last one, yet the pay remains roughly the same. I manage two groups with aligned purposes, which makes it infinitely easier to focus and drive collaboration. In my last role, I was juggling five disjointed groups with zero overlap—a recipe for constant headaches.

Then there’s the “asshat factor,” which is remarkably low on my current team. Daily interactions are generally pleasant. When I first joined, I inherited two “special” people; one was smart enough to realize I wasn’t buying his nonsense and left quickly, and the other is starting to get the hint. Because of our structure, I’m shielded from the few asshats hiding in other departments.

The managers reporting to me are highly capable. They run their own shows. I help when needed, but otherwise, I stay out of their way. It’s the way I like to work, and it’s the way I like to manage.

This has afforded me a luxury I never thought I’d have: time. I’m 90 blog articles and 85,000 words deep into what could be a decent-sized book. I’ve always wanted to write, and hitting that word count feels like checking off a life goal. It’s been incredible self-therapy, and I expect to enjoy it even more once I fully retire.

The financial side is just as critical. We’ve hit a nest-egg milestone that 10 years ago would have seemed insane. Making this money while Padme navigates her own career challenges has reduced our stress significantly. If I had already pulled the plug on my career, our anxiety levels would be much higher. This paycheck allows us to make better, clearer decisions.

And there is the structure. I know I need it, and this job provides it. It’s given me the breathing room to build an exercise routine that is actually starting to stick.

I’m proud of what I’ve built here. With very little effort, my group went from being a “swear word” in other departments to being stable and reliable. It’s what I do when I take on a new group. We aren’t the best, but we aren’t the slowest. You don’t have to outrun the bear—you just have to outrun a few other people. And we have.

At first, I caught myself downplaying it—it felt “too easy.” But it isn’t the effort that counts. It’s the results. There’s a classic engineering parable about a master who fixes a problem with the tap of a hammer. It applies to all of us grey hairs who are running their own show.

The Parable of the Engineer and the Hammer

An enormous cargo ship’s engine failed, and the ship’s owners were losing thousands of dollars every day it sat idle in the harbor. They brought in one expert after another, but none of them could figure out how to get the massive engine started again.

In desperation, they tracked down an old engineer who had been fixing ship engines for forty years. He arrived carrying only a small canvas bag of tools.

Without saying a word, the old man immediately went to work. He spent hours walking through the massive engine room, closely inspecting the labyrinth of pipes, listening intently to the quiet hum of the auxiliary systems, and gently feeling the metal hull for vibrations.

The ship’s owners watched him, skeptical that an old man with such basic tools could fix a problem that had baffled the industry’s top tech teams.

Finally, the engineer stopped in front of a specific section of complex piping. He reached into his bag, pulled out a small claw hammer, and tapped a single valve once.

*Clink*

Instantly, the massive engine shuddered, roared to life, and began to purr perfectly. The engineer put his hammer back in his bag, turned on his heel, and walked away. The ship was ready to sail.

A few days later, the ship owners received an invoice from the old engineer for $10,000.

The owners were furious. “He was only there for a few hours, and he only tapped it once!” they complained. They sent a message back to the engineer demanding an itemized bill.

The engineer sent back a new invoice that read:

• Tapping with a hammer: $2.00
• Knowing where to tap: $9,998.00

Total: $10,000

It took more than one tap for me, but I fixed the problems quickly, and I’m choosing to be proud of that. Here’s celebrating what skills I have learned over a 30 year career.

I genuinely enjoy most of the people I work with. There are three folks here from my old company whom I deeply trust, one of whom I consider a true friend. I’m happy for him, too. He was stuck in a high-paying role at the previous Death Star that made him miserable. I brought him over here, and while the pay is slightly less, he’s happy. He looks forward to the day. When I eventually retire, he’ll likely have my job if he wants it, and I’m glad I could help him get there.

In a strange way, this job is the perfect bookend to my career. My office is less than 1km from the first house I lived in when I moved to this city 25 years ago. Later this year, my company is moving into a building where I spent some of the best years of my career, sitting directly across the street from my old Death Star. After 15 years spent orbiting that specific location, it feels fitting to end things back where it all started.

It feels like a good way to end this chapter or stage in my life.

But soon

No Death Star, No empire, No problems…..