Usually when I talk about my current work, it is about its faults, corporate weirdness, and how large companies get to be so dysfunctional. It is the main reason many people want to retire. It is why some people find the FIRE crowd.

They have taken the “Red pill” and see the truth of the corporate world. 

They can no longer “not see” the game, and it drives us away from work. It drives the desire to define our own life.

Once you reach or get close to FI, it gets tougher to ignore the politics and the corporate stupidity. When you need the money there is a padding on the wall that you bang your head on at work (its why cubicles are soft material).  When you don’t need the money the padding disappears and it’s just concrete and forehead. Dumb things just hurt more.

For me, today is a celebration. I came out ahead in the win column by no design of my own because of the typical corporations insanity . The game worked for me for once.

At my last Death Star, I managed a bunch of back-office functions. Important to the business, but not sexy. Like most companies, a reorg was happening when a peer decided he had enough. He decided to retire. Because of how the reorg was happening, I was the only one who could take his teams.

“Vader, congrats on your new teams. You have no choice. More work, and no more recognition or pay. Have fun.”

Let’s just say these departments were small and necessary evils. They were the biggest pain in my ass over the next two years and made up a large chunk of my stress.

The one manager, Darth Maul, had me in HR anytime I blinked for no reason:

• Ask her to be in the office for more than three hours a day. To HR.
• Not print her formal review for her. To HR.
• Use the term single mother in a sentence one day. To HR 
• Go to one of her meetings where she was doing a brief-out and stay quiet. Off to HR.
• Ask her to let me know when she was taking time off. HR.

And on and on.

The CEO told me this manager was unfireable due to 20 years of knowledge and contacts no one else had. He even told me stories of how she screwed up one of his own major projects, and then concluded that she had to stay. 

The CEO admitting an employee is toxic, incompetent, and actively causing project issues, only to shrug and say “nothing we can do,” is the ultimate proof that logic doesn’t always drive the org.  It ruined my last two years, to be honest, and had me actively looking for a new job.

Fast forward to today. The manager at my new Death Star who manages these exact same two departments is leaving. At this Death Star, these functions are given even more lip service than my last one. They are an evil necessity, but not funded well enough to do a half-decent job.

Who can we get to manage them? Who has experience in these functions? We think Vader does.

To be honest, I was the logical choice among the three senior managers to take them, as I currently have the least on my plate.

My friend is one of those three senior managers. Not long ago, I told her my plans to FIRE and leave anytime in the next 12 months. She knew that forcing these departments onto my desk could have been the catalyst for me leaving sooner rather than later. So, she knew not to advocate too hard for me to get them. 

So yay for FIRE.

I had the mental safety net of knowing I could walk away at any moment if Darth Maul 2.0 dropped onto my desk. That “FIRE” leverage changes your entire stress level. I wasn’t desperate to look good or appease a boss. It actually helped me handle the situation without going dark.

Then the Big Boss looks at the politics: “Wait, we can’t give them to Vader.”

Why? Vader reports into the head office out of country. He is only dotted-line to management in-country. On top of that, they have a hiring freeze in Vader’s world. We can’t move them to him. He is not part of our local org structure, and it will cause issues with corporate.

“Sorry guys. I really wanted to do it. I really did. Thanks for thinking of me, but you know head office. Oh well.”

The real takeaway here isn’t just that corporate bureaucracy is absurd—we already knew that. The lesson is how Financial Independence changes your internal balance of power.

Three years ago, when the first Death Star forced those departments onto my plate, I didn’t have my FIRE armor fully forged. I absorbed the stress, dealt with HR grievances over minor nonsense, and let an unfireable manager turn my workweek into a grind. I felt trapped because, back then, I still needed the paycheque more than I valued my sanity.

Fast forward to today. Reaching FI doesn’t magically destroy corporate stupidity, but it grants you a Force field. Because I know I can walk away anytime in the next 12 months, my reaction to the exact same corporate maneuver was night and day. There was zero anxiety, no late-night dread, and no desperate attempt to play office politics to look like a “team player.”

When you stop needing the Empire’s validation, corporate dysfunction stops hurting you. Sometimes, you don’t even have to fight the Death Star—you just sit back, let their own red tape block the blow, and watch the win fall right into your column.

The irony is not lost on me that almost three years to the date, I was faced with the exact same corporate game. In neither role did I have a say in the matter. It was all dictated by whatever structure was in place at both Death Stars. For employees who think decisions at the org level are done with logic, sorry to disappoint—it usually doesn’t happen that way.

Score the win for Vader

Dodged a bullet this time