What the hell is BEYOND?

Well, the story is done. You read it. You felt the brutality of it, thought about it. Maybe loved or hated it. Either is perfect. The meaning is yours.

You did read it, right? Right!? If not, catch up before going any further: https://www.tracingechoes.com/p/innocence.

So, there is more. So much more.

Every BEYOND explores three things around the story. Those three will change with each season. For Backpacks, they are EARTH, HUMANS and MY TAKE.

EARTH is the location in the story. The country, the city, the history, the present. Any of that. Things worth knowing.

HUMANS is the people. Culture, connections, kindness, stupidity, misunderstandings. Things worth feeling.

MY TAKE is me, Jonas. What I personally think. What I believe. What I don’t. Things I learned. The earth and the humans through my very opinionated eyes. Things worth thinking.

Oh, and there will also be photos. Taken there, back then, by me. Good ones and bad ones. They’re all real.

In the story, I’m part of what happened, a character. I loved or hated it just as much. I was there. Here, in BEYOND, I show up as me. Today.

EARTH

When you’re standing in Angkor Wat, you just feel how powerful this civilization was. How ancient it is. Cambodia, most of Laos and Thailand, even southern parts of Vietnam were ruled by the Khmer empire. Angkor was the sprawling Southeast Asian metropolis. Now scroll forward by one thousand years.

In March 2014 I stood on what’s left of the killing fields. The Choeung Ek memorial center was built to remember. The documentation is very blunt. It takes guts to stomach all the brutality. Take the killing tools. Pickaxes, hammers or simply iron bars. I looked at them through the glass display cases. Built to build. Used to kill. The Khmer Rouge. Maybe you heard of them. I hadn’t. Not before I searched “things to do in Cambodia”. The piles of skulls publicly displayed for anyone to look at are still haunting me. Between 1975 and 1979 around two million people died. Roughly a quarter of the country. Many were simply executed. I felt like shit not even thirty minutes in.

The Khmer Rouge had a slogan: “To dig up the grass, one has to remove even the roots.” So they kept beating young children, infants even, against trees, until their dead bodies got thrown into the mass graves alongside their parents. Ensuring nothing grows back. With the goal in mind to destroy modern society, they targeted the educated and professionals. Doctors, teachers, engineers. I’m an engineer. Even wearing eyeglasses could make you look like an intellectual. People hid them. I want to leave. I stay.

I grew up in central Germany. I know evil. I went to the concentration camp in Dachau as a kid. And again as a grown up. I stood inside the gas chamber. School taught us. They also put the pictures in front of us, repeatedly. Evil knows no boundaries. I very much know. Mass graves in both countries. The darkness of humanity, it’s devastating.

The Khmer Rouge left a demographic scar that is still visible today. Cambodia is a very young country. Almost half its population is under twenty-five (as of 2019, https://www.nis.gov.kh/nis/Census2019/Children%20and%20Youth.pdf). And you can really feel it. I felt it back then. I’ve walked through the streets of Siem Reap, Battambang and Phnom Penh. Twice, in 2014 and 2016, I saw very few old people.

HUMANS

A few days before the killing fields, in Battambang, teens kept approaching me. There were way fewer tourists there. The kids and some young adults wanted to know my name, where I was from, what I was doing there. They were practicing their English. Proudly. They told me they wanted to get good enough so that they could leave Cambodia. Earn money. To them, the West was a gateway. A way out. This was 2014, twelve years ago. I wonder if any of them left. How many came back later. Back then, they told me all this with smiles on their faces. They looked happy. I believed it. Looking back I think it was genuine. They were happy.

The first couple of times these young people approached me, I got caught a little bit off-guard. At some point I started noticing it. It wasn’t just me. There were a few groups of teenagers, one or two foreigners in the middle. As a German it’s impossible to hide. I’m white. A few others were as well. We were like magnets. I’d lie if I didn’t enjoy the importance. The attention.

One guy I remember very clearly. He was around twenty, we talked for maybe an hour. I had a little bit more time to kill, so I didn’t mind. At some point, he suddenly asked if I could help him get a Western girlfriend. I thought he was joking. So I laughed. He was dead serious. I triple checked. He sincerely believed I could just arrange this. He told me it was his dream. To this day I don’t know what to make of that guy. I left pretty soon after.

More than two years later, in September 2016 I came back to Cambodia. One night in Phnom Penh I went to a rooftop restaurant. Alone, there was nobody interesting in the hostel. The restaurant was rather empty. I stayed longer than planned. The view was very nice. The waitress and I started chatting a little bit. Small talk. Her English was decent. I enjoyed a cocktail.

When I was about to leave, she asked if I wanted to come party with her and some friends later. My default instinct kicked in. Say no. I do that a lot if I get uncomfortable socially. I chicken out by reflex. For once, I stopped myself. Why not, I dared myself.

We met like an hour later. She showed up with a few friends. Mostly guys. Gay. Fast forward five hours. The sun is coming up, I’m finally on my way home. Well, or the equivalent of home. My hostel.

The Cambodian guys didn’t fuss over me. I wasn’t the attraction I assumed I’d be. The fancy guy from the West. They talked to me, sure, they were interested. But mostly they just went partying and had fun. Two different clubs. We danced, chatted, laughed a lot. They kept buying drinks. I kept trying to pay. I gave up.

I never saw any of them again.

It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had traveling solo. Kind, genuine people being normal people. They let me in. Into their lives for one night, let me be part of it.

MY TAKE

Innocence. I love the phonetics. It sounds beautiful.

Let’s pull up a specific definition.

“The notion of innocence refers to children’s simplicity, their lack of knowledge, and their (assumed or conceded) purity not yet spoiled by mundane affairs.” — Oxford Academic

What very much stands out to me is the lack of knowledge. The innocence of kids is amazing to observe. I have two little kids right now. Four and two. Their naive approach to many things is so refreshing compared to our complicated adult brains. Innocence is like an invisible layer. There are simply so many ugly things that haven’t entered their world yet. I remember when I was that young. I can’t remember worrying. I just lived.

At some point though, there’s ugliness. Ugly things. Knowledge comes. Kids eventually get spoiled by rather mundane affairs. Hopefully, mundane. A friend lies to you and you realize people you love can hurt you. Your parents promise they’ll come to something important. Then they don’t. Now you know disappointment. You start to distrust. Small things. Mundane. A little innocence is gone.

Now read that definition again and think about that Cambodian girl that offered herself up to a stranger. For a night. It’s been twelve years and I still feel the tears coming. It hurts. I wonder where she is now. What she’s doing. In her mid-twenties. I wonder if she’s happy. Truly happy now.

I don’t know if there is anything uglier, more brutal, more devastating, than this. For a girl that young. Oxford defines innocence partly as lack of knowledge. Well, guess what. She knew something no child that age should ever have to know. That’s a wound so deep, how will it ever heal?

It took us three a long time to find any words. To talk to her. Eventually, we told her no. Strongly, passionately. Repeatedly. That this is not something she should ever do. We tried to explain the pure wrongness, the pure evil of it. She said she’s fine. She’s happy. It felt true. It really did. Looking back though, I feel guilty. What we did didn’t feel like enough. At some point, we left. Ran away, nearly. Left her behind. Never saw her again.

And that’s the thing about guilt. You can forgive yourself later. You still did what you did though. I left.

Knowledge is very different. You simply can’t unknow it.

Is there a way forward for her? Can you know something like that and still move on? How the hell am I even supposed to answer that question. I’m hoping. But hoping is rarely enough.

Let me end with Tom Robbins: “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

I’m afraid that little girl’s childhood is gone for good. Despite never being guilty.

Before I really end this though, I need to tell you something warm.

That haunting Angkor Wat trip in 2014 eventually resulted in something genuinely good. That picture of me nose to nose, to be very specific. I used it as a dating profile picture on an app called Bumble in 2018. A woman I met there told me she swiped right because she found that picture funny. And now, one last time, fast forward eight years. There are two little kids running around me, they are four and two. They are ours.

Season Two · Backpacks · BEYOND 1/12

So, that was the very first BEYOND. I wanted all of you to see what it is. One full article. Not just promise it or list the benefits.

Because the next BEYOND will be paid. The stories stay completely free.

If you want the earth, the humans, my take, the photos and all the weird things I sincerely care about, come along. If not, genuinely, keep reading the stories. You decide how far you want to go.

I’d love to have you. Thank you for being here.

It’s brutally hot. March in Cambodia, mid-afternoon at Angkor Wat. Dry season, so the sun sits directly on your skull. We keep drinking. We sweat all the time, but the water keeps disappearing from our skin. The air is damp, the humidity choking.

We came in on a TukTuk early that morning. The three of us. Mid-twenties, travelling on almost nothing. Cheap hostels, street food. That’s how you do it. I met Sophie and Ruben a few weeks back in Malaysia, travelled with them there, went diving on the Perhentian Islands on my own, then we teamed back up in Cambodia. They’re Dutch. A couple. Doing the whole world thing. Two people with their hearts wide open. Honest and kind. The real deal.

Most tourists get driven around all day because of the heat. We walk. Sometimes on stone, most of the time on dirt roads. The brown earth gets stirred up with each step, getting into our eyes and noses. The water in the bottles has been warm for a while. We hurry from shade to shade. From tree to tree to temple to tree. Avoiding the sun as best as we can, our shirts stiff with salt.

Angkor Wat is massive. The biggest religious monument on earth. Built for a king nine hundred years ago. Hindu first, then Buddhist. It stayed holy. Pilgrims came for centuries after the court moved on. Now you pay to walk around inside it. It takes days to see it all. We take two. This is day one, and it’s endless.

But the trees are the real attraction. They are taking the temples back. Ta Prohm. The Tomb Raider temple. Angelina Jolie ran through it in the film. The trees there grow around the stone. They grow into it. Through it. Roots as thick as bodies, holding the walls up. Crunching the stone. It’s all ruins. It’s a whole civilization getting lost to a forest.

Up close the stone crumbles. Dirt and moss. A dancer carved in a doorway, worn down, one arm gone. I touch it. Sand drops. Nine hundred years.

Nature really does always find its way.

We’re awed. Mesmerized. Probably a little bit overheated and dehydrated. Physically and mentally exhausted. I am also genuinely happy. We’re alone a lot, because we got off the main tracks fast. The big temples, Angkor Wat itself, the Bayon with all the stone faces, are always crammed. Get away from those to the small ones and you start relaxing. There are still voices carrying over to us and insects humming like crazy, filling the gaps. The temples keep going in nearly every direction. Every now and then there’s some tourist appearing from a doorway, messing up our pictures.

There are a lot of Cambodian kids though. It’s at least the third big group we meet. Their voices are high and thin, always calling to us. One dollar, Mister. They come running on the dirt tracks, their little hands grabbing onto us. They surround us, they block our way, we keep pushing for a way out. Little ones, six to ten, black hair, dirty clothes. Shoes with holes or no shoes at all. But their English is good, way better than I’d expect, they know a lot of words. Not just ‘One dollar, Mister’. One dollar, Mister, they keep repeating. Postcards, scarves, bracelets, anything. Everything.

And they’re so charming. So innocent.

Sophie and I have already said no pretty firmly a few times, and they gave up on us fast. But Ruben, they caught Ruben. He’s kind. He keeps answering, interacting with them. He’s too kind. They don’t let him go. He relents, buys a few postcards. It doesn’t stop them. They keep talking and clinging to him, laughing, running along.

We keep walking. One or two more sites before we head back to the hostel. Sophie and I are talking about this surreal place we’re standing in.

Then we suddenly stop dead. We look at each other.

“Did she really say that?”

“Yes. She did.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

We don’t say any of it out loud. It happens between us in a second. We turn around. It’s a girl, older than the rest. Maybe eleven. Max fourteen. Slim, very long, straight, dark hair. A colorful dress drenched in brown dust. A shy grin on her face.

Her voice is low. We still hear every single word, very clearly.

She said to Ruben, exactly this: “You can also have me for one night, Mister.”

Sophie and I look at Ruben. His face is pure horror. He looks at her. No one says anything.

She smiles.

Season Two · Backpacks · Story 1/12

Well, the story is done. You read it. You felt the brutality of it, thought about it. Maybe loved or hated it. Either is perfect. The meaning is yours.

But, there is more. So much more. To GO BEYOND, continue here: https://www.tracingechoes.com/p/beyond-innocence

Twelve stories. That’s enough, I’m done. Leaders is done.

Work, power, trust, ego, fear, careers, decisions. People trying too hard to look professional. I spent twelve years in corporate. Big companies, big titles, big bosses, proud me. Some people were brilliant. Some were assholes. I was both. On more than one day.

Corporate life gets mocked a lot. At least everywhere but on LinkedIn. And the mocking has a few good reasons. Look at all the wasted PowerPoint decks. Scheming politics because a CTO lacks any empathy. A high priority meeting to prepare the next high priority meeting tomorrow. Don’t sleep on transformation and stakeholder management. There are entire dictionaries for new joiners so adults can pretend to be even more professional.

Still, corporate life is life. So many people spend eight hours a day there. Or more. Years. Decades. They fall in love. Get divorced. They gain confidence. And lose it. They get promoted and suddenly sit differently in chairs. They get put on a new project and dance at two am in an Indian golf club. Friendships start. Jealousy unspoken. Kindness, fear, pride, humiliation. You want coffee and your boss’s secretary publicly cuts in line. Just normal human stuff, squeezed between Teams meetings.

So, I don’t know what these twelve stories taught you about leadership. Or me. Leaders matter. But far less than they think. Power does change people. But most notice far too late. The meaning of my stories is yours. Because learnings aren’t always clean. Most are messy. In the grey. Corporate life certainly was for me.

So, what now? I’m done writing about leadership. Not because I don’t care about leaders anymore. I just don’t want to care about corporate environments. Not now. Maybe leaders come back one day, in a completely different setting.

Also, because that’s me.

I go head over heels into things. Completely, embarrassingly, bat-shit crazy. I travel for months. I start kickboxing. I code quickshell. I run mountains. Coach kids. Read yet another fantasy book. I find something new and I’m gone for weeks. Also, some crucial piece of equipment arrives tomorrow that I absolutely needed.

Full steam ahead.

I wrote recently that activity might be my armor. That I’ve spent a lot of my life answering who I am with the things I do. I know that part of me. Standing still is suspicious. I swear.

But that’s not all it is. I genuinely love moving.

I love finding stuff I don’t understand yet. Places I haven’t been to. Ideas to think through. I’m fine changing my mind. Being wrong. Maybe that one not so much. I get obsessed, happily. Trying things. Seeing things. Realizing, eventually, how much of the world I still haven’t seen.

Movement is my armor. I get that. It’s also very much me. You see, the window in my room is always open. Fresh air gets in all the time. Wind, rain, snow. Noise. All of it. I like the heat in summer, but I’m living in Germany. We have seasons.

So, TracingEchoes will do what I do. Get blown away by one thing for twelve stories. Then, who knows?

Leaders was first. I loved parts of it. Hated other parts of it. No regrets. I lived all of it. And the window is open. Something else is already coming in. It’s not winter.

It’s backpacks.

Cold and rainy, it’s German autumn. Everything is damp, the boardwalk, my jeans and my shoes. I get into the office early, semi-soaked, nobody there yet. The air feels stale. I sit down, sad and defeated. My PC starts up. I wait until my face unlocks it. No password to mistype. I open Outlook.

Wait. An email from Neil?

He is the CTO. Four levels above me. I notice the time. He sent it very late. I open it immediately.

Yesterday was one of the worst days I ever had as a product manager. We killed my product. A new app the company badly needed. Customers had serious problems, internal teams too. Everyone wanted this thing. We had spent more than a year building it. Millions invested.

The technology was too new. Industry standards weren’t ready. Marketing kept pushing feature requests. We underestimated things, made mistakes. Bugs appeared, disappeared, came back. We fixed things and found new things. It just never ended. Nobody had messed it up alone. All of us had somehow contributed.

Still, everybody wanted to continue. The team still believed in it. Everyone kept hoping the finish line was just around the next bug’s corner. Including me. But even if you’ve already spent millions, the next million still costs another million. I had been deeply involved. I adapted the product scope and kept adjusted the timeline. Sometimes I fought the team. I had been demanding. Angry. Very disappointed and eventually exhausted. I often fought myself. By the end, I wanted it to work just so I could finally be done with it.

So for days, I prepared the big meeting. Neil would finally join our discussions. Technical issues, costs, risks, alternatives, consequences. All of it leading to one recommendation. The hardest recommendation I had ever made.

Kill it. Completely.

No more money. No extra six months. No glorious final push with inspiring background music from Hans Zimmer.

The meeting itself only took about an hour. Neil was hard. Extremely hard. We went deep. Technical details, our mistakes, the company image and alternatives. A lot of why. Neil kept asking questions. How did we get here? Why didn’t we stop earlier? Which technical problems could still be solved? What happens to our customers? What does this mean financially? The atmosphere stayed fair though. Neil was never rude, never insulting, never loud. Nobody got attacked personally. It was professional despite the obvious anger and frustration.

Eventually there was nothing left to discuss. My recommendation was up there on the final slide, shared across every screen.

Kill it. Completely.

Neil agreed. And that was it. A year of work gone for good. I got what I asked for. And I still left defeated.

I went back to the team. They hated it. Of course, they built the thing. They fought the bugs, solved so many of them nobody outside the team even knew existed. They spent a year trying to make this work. Long days, long evenings and many bad nights of sleep. And to them, I was the one who killed it. They knew I recommended it, I had explained it before. Still, I explained it again. Numbers, risks, technical reality, money. It didn’t help. They still hated it. You can’t argue emotions. They were frustrated, demotivated, angry. Same as me. At the situation, at us, at me.

I went home late feeling like shit. Later still, Neil sent the email.

“You prepared the meeting very well, Jonas. Because of that we were able to make a decision.”

I read it again. And again. The product is dead. The team is still angry. The money is gone. I am still sad. But also a little proud.

Neil doesn’t tell me things are fine. Doesn’t soften the failure. Our failure. Yesterday, he made that extremely clear. We must be better than this.

Still, he tells me I did well. And yes, it matters that it’s Neil. Let’s not pretend otherwise. He’s the CTO. I respect him. Smart, direct, very good in town halls, very little bullshit. I start answering. Typing. The office is still almost empty. The keyboard is the only noise. I might be hitting it too hard. It clatters very loud. Backspace. Again. Delete. More clatter. Too formal. Ctrl+Z. I try again. Too eager this time. Again. Why am I not getting this right?

So many replies to Neil I don’t send. So I start working instead. Still sad, still disappointed. But harder than ever before at that company. Neil didn’t ask me to. No motivational speech, no company values at play. He just wrote that email last night and hit Enter.

It takes me the whole day to finally hit Enter on my keyboard. By then, I am alone in the office, yet again. I respond with some generic thank you. Something about how difficult that decision and situation has been for all of us. The exact words don’t matter.

I’m not suddenly fine again. Not even close. But my defeat has its first crack.

Season One · Leaders · Story 12/12

The meeting room is boring. Just nothing. Outside, the day is grey and frozen in early February. Inside, the heating burns. I am getting nervous. Hot. He’s five minutes late.

My phone vibrates. Maria, Stefan’s secretary, texts me. Where are you?

I look around the meeting room. The meeting invitation confirms it. In the meeting room?

Three dots. Stefan always receives people in his office.

Of course. I am eight minutes late when I finally get there. Two floors up and two corridors down. Maria’s waiting outside, already shaking her head.

“Why were you in the meeting room?” she asks. It sounds rhetorical. She points towards the open door.

Stefan looks up from his screen, notices me and his whole face changes. His frown disappears, replaced by his signature smile. He comes around his standing desk and welcomes me. Open and warm.

“Jonas! So good to see you. How was your parental leave?”

“It wasn’t. Just normal holidays.” I almost answer. But why would I correct him.

Instead, I tell him about Oman and its amazing people. Our kids seeing something completely different. He loves that we went there while they were only two and three. Next week, he tells me, he’s taking his son to India on a business trip. He graduated from school a few weeks back. Work first for Stefan, then time together. To show him the country.

Stefan is a man possessed. I’ve seen him understand technical problems frighteningly fast. Complicated systems with way too many dependencies and responsibilities. He’ll go very deep. And come back out first.

To me, he’s also very warm. Interested. Easy to talk to. I should like him, I think. He has fired dozens of people over the course of last year. I’ve heard stories about him shouting at employees. People getting on his bad side in the very first meeting. He told me as much himself. About my own boss. Me though, I’m clearly in the other category, the good graces club.

He’s got a fancy windowed corner office with a small, boring table in the middle of it. We sit down across. He drops the sugar. He tells me I’m such a strong manager. People trust me, my employees praise me. I get difficult things done. I’m someone to rely on. Exactly what he needs. He hardly knows me personally. I’ll still take it. Why fight compliments. Genuine or not. Let’s be honest, I am also not telling him that I don’t trust him. I’m here because I want something from him. A career jump, maybe. And more money. Can I make use of his power for my own purposes? I don’t have to be his friend for that.

He just keeps going. The whole company is changing, especially software. We have the once-in-a-lifetime chance to shape a whole industry. He’s good at this. Not just slick. Practiced. He’s convinced of himself. It’s effective. And it works. I enjoy his praise.

“I really want you in my team,” he says.

A leader several levels above me, sitting across from me, responsible for hundreds of people, telling me he wants me. I feel important. Seen, valued, all that stuff. He keeps selling. Responsibility. Difficult problems. Taking ownership. He wants people who don’t wait to be told what to do. People like me. I know what happens when Stefan doesn’t want someone. I am suspicious. But the way to get what I want is open.

Eventually I interrupt. “Alright. Which topics or teams are we talking about?”

He looks at me. As he already said, there are so many possibilities. I know the organization myself. I should go and talk to people. Look around. See where I can make the biggest difference.

“Anything specific you had in mind?”

“No. Not yet.”

Whatever I find, whatever I arrange, whatever role I build around it, he will support me. Complete freedom. No boundaries. Isn’t that generous? I should leave his office ecstatic. I’m not sure. Stefan shakes my hand. Still the same warmth. Same smile.

“Go find something exciting.”

“I will.”

“I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks.”

“And let’s stay close and talk again soon.”

“Sure.”

I leave his office. I look around. I talk to different people. I find exactly what Stefan said was out there. A senior manager puts an amazing offer on the table. Building a new global team from scratch around one of the company’s most important new products. Stefan told him I might come looking. The only thing left is my signature.

Three weeks later, I resign. Not only because of Stefan. There were also other decisions and arguments. People I no longer trust. I tell myself I am leaving because honesty matters more to me than my career. Being genuine. All the noble stuff.

But I had also just sat across from Stefan, smiled, took his praise and never told him what I really thought of him or the culture he built around himself. I played nice too. Silent dishonesty. My own little performance.

Stefan, who wanted me close and in his team, never texted me again. Never talked to me. Weeks passed. Silence.

The curtain falls. I clap.

Season One · Leaders · Story 11/12

My pen flies. It smoothly spins around my thumb. Under, over, I catch it. Again. I’ve done this for so many years. Practice made perfect. No idea when it started. School. University. Doesn’t matter. It hardly ever drops. Extremely impressive skill, no? I need it on LinkedIn.

Under, over. Around. Catch.

Mira is sitting next to me. Not opposite. You’re not supposed to sit opposite of people. That would be arguing and fighting. No, we sit ninety degrees. Less confrontational. More human.

They taught that at a leadership training. All these little tricks. Hold the silence. Ask open questions. Don’t cross your arms. Sit beside people. Let them find the answer. Steer them softly. To the destination you picked.

My pen goes around. Not falling. Never.

Mira talks a lot. That’s not criticism, not at all. Put a question into our team chat and she’ll answer first. Ask for help and she’s there to talk you through it. The meeting is silent? She’s out sick.

Mira has ideas. Mira has opinions. She argues with colleagues. With me. Especially with me because I argue back. If there’s something she doesn’t understand, she says she doesn’t understand and asks for another explanation. No bullshit attitude.

And she feels people. Someone goes quiet mid-discussion. She knows why. Someone gets pissed. She knows why. Someone laughs but is silently hurting. Somehow Mira fucking knows why, again. She carries people. Their problems. Their moods. Their good days. Their terrible ones. Someone needs confidence, Mira tells them they’re great.

The introduction got out of hand. You still there? Well, Mira and I are. We’re here. It’s one of our normal one-on-ones. She’s having a great day. She’s happy. We’re coming off a refinement session in which she spotted a severe security risk. I tell her. How important her spotting this risk was. How well she did there. She immediately starts returning the compliment.

“Yeah, but the others helped a lot as well.”

“They did.”

“And Thomas prepared the refinement perfectly.”

“I know.”

When she’s about to defer further, I stop her.

“Mira.”

“What?”

My pen goes over my thumb. I catch it. As always.

“Why are you underselling yourself again?”

She looks confused. Or plays confused. I’m not sure. “What do you mean?”

“Oh come on, you know”, I respond.

“No?”

“You did great today. You are a great developer. Why are you so reluctant to just take the compliment?”

“I’m not reluctant. I’m just realistic.” Ah. Realistic. Such a polite knife.

“I’m not that amazing,” she says. “The others are also good.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“That.”

She smiles. “I’m just saying the others are good too.”

“I know.”

“So what?”

“We’re talking about you, not them.”

“Ok.”

“So. Let’s talk about you.”

“What about me?”

“You’re one of the best developers on this team.”

She looks away. “Maybe. But you know that I don’t like to talk about me or praise myself.”

Not I’m not good. Not you’re wrong. And yes, by now, I know that she does not like the spotlight and especially not the praise. Still, I challenge her. I push.

“Why?”

She shrugs. “There’s always things to learn. Or ways to get better.”

“Sure. But you’re already very good at what you do. Right now.”

“But I don’t have to like talking about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because that makes me feel arrogant. And I don’t like arrogant people.”

My turn to smile. Finally a topic I have experience with personally. Arrogance.

“I tell people I’m good all the time.”

“Yes.”

Way too fast. Little shit. We’re about to make some real progress now.

“Well, your turn now. Say it.”

“What?”

My pen keeps going. Around and around and around. No sound.

“Tell me you’re very good.”

“I already did.”

“No. Maybe you did a little. But we started at the security problem, I complimented you and you immediately told me the other developers are good too.”

“Because they are.”

“Mira.”

“What do you want?”

“Tell me how good you are. Not them.”

She stares at me.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

“Go.”

A few seconds of silence. That rarely ever happens with Mira. She’s waiting for me. Hoping, searching for an escape. The I’m not actually going to make you go through with this escape.

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“This is stupid.”

“I don’t think so.”

She looks at the pen. Back at me.

“Okay. I’m good.”

“Is that a question?”

“Oh come on.”

“That was terrible.”

“I said it.”

“Say it again. Convincingly.” As if that were that easy. Right here, on the spot.

She stares at me. The smiles are all gone.

“Seriously?”

My pen keeps spinning. Dancing.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

It’s all psychology. Leadership tricks, you remember. Say it out loud. Hear yourself say it. Repeat. Practice made perfect. The books are always clever. And all the while I’m sitting next to a woman who clearly hates this. Really hates it. Hates me using managerial authority to make her praise herself repeatedly.

“I want you to simply say it and mean it.”

“You’re enjoying this”, she counters.

“A little.”

“Douchebag.”

“Still. Go again.”

“I’m a good developer.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“I do. You tell me.”

“Jonas, this is stupid.”

“You said that before.”

She stares towards the window. “I’m good at finding bugs and fixing them. I have a lot of domain knowledge. I help people.”

“You’re just good?”

“Ok! I’m very good at fixing bugs.”

“What else?”

“Sometimes, I find things other people miss.”

I don’t respond. She fills the silence.

“Fine, I find them most of the time.”

“And?”

“I solve other people’s problems.”

“Fair enough. What else? We’re not done yet.” I press on.

“I don’t know. And I still don’t like this. Can we please stop?” My fingers spin another round. And another one. Flying. The pen never taking off. Sticking to my thumb.

Again.

She finally tries.

A maybe dies.

Again.

Another I think survives. I have her kill it next try.

Again.

She goes back to hiding behind somebody else. AGAIN.

“The team—”

“No.”

“What?”

“Not the team.”

“But—”

“You.”

She looks genuinely pissed now.

Good. No. Maybe not good. Let me remove maybe. Definitely not good. I pushed too far. I can tell myself she can stop this whenever she wants. I can pretend. But power doesn’t just disappear because I sit ninety degrees next to her.

“I’m very good at what I do,” she says. “I’m technically strong. I solve complex problems. I learn fast. People come to me when they need help.”

“Why?”

“Because they trust me.”

“And?”

She looks at me. Stares. The piercing murder look.

“Because I’m very good at it.”

I smile. She doesn’t. I can see how hard this is for her. I can’t feel it. I’ve never had any trouble saying I’m good at something. The opposite rather. Still, I see her struggling. I see how much she hates me making her look arrogant. To her. Confident. To me.

“Again.”

She answers. Defeated.

“I’m very good at my job. I see things other people don’t see. I solve hard problems. People trust me. I make the team better. I’m a great teammate.”

Silence.

“Yes, you are” I say.

She looks away again. Later, I would hear about this conversation again. Quite a lot of it, actually. She told her colleagues straight away. And boy, did this story get popular fast. Months later, Mira told me herself. How horrible it felt. How physically wrong. But also how much it helped her in the long run. Slowly, she started catching these tiny escape doors. The ones hidden inside normal sentences.

Maybe. I think. The others. Sometimes.

Not always. This isn’t Marvel. Nobody gets bitten by a radioactive performance review and wakes up with confidence powers. Oh, do I love that sentence.

But sometimes. Sometimes she took some praise without instantly returning the compliment.

I loved noticing that. Of course I did. Look at me. Great leader. Wonderful. Somebody update my LinkedIn skills. For real, this time.

That’s me being lucky. Good consequences. Back in that room, none of those consequences existed. Yet. No grateful future Mira and no colleagues telling me how much it mattered to her. No proof that I was helping rather than just being the leader asshole that wouldn’t stop pushing her.

That room was her. Me. My pen.

“Again.”

She groans. “How often do I have to repeat that?”

“Last one.”

“You said that before.”

I don’t need to answer. She turns toward me properly now. The escape routes are slowly disappearing.

“Go.”

“I’m very good at what I do. I solve difficult problems. I see things others miss. People trust me. I make this team better.”

“I’m one of the best developers here.”

She stops. No smile. No I think. No maybe. No the team.

And that’s it. She just sits there. Calm.

I notice my own thumb. The pen moving. Over. Under. Oh shit. It slips. Stupidly loud, the plastic against the table. Piercing.

“Again,” Mira teases.

Oh fuck off. Yes, I know. How disgusting is this ending? This coincidence? The metaphor drops. She says again. Full circle character development. Somewhere on Substack, a creative-writing teacher just got an erection.

Except none of that really happened. No pen drop. I made it up.

I wish it had happened. Because if Mira says again, I get instant absolution. The tension drops, the joke’s on me, we’re all happy smiles. My douchebag pushing gets instant redemption. Everyone goes home beautifully transformed. Great leadership. Five stars. Off into the sunset.

No. Instead, Mira just sat there. Calm. Nothing else happened. We left. I felt bad. A little bit.

What I hate is that I am always the one left craving more. That’s the thing with me. It’s never enough. Mira wasn’t. The story wasn’t. Nothing ever is. So I push it and bend it. I make it obey. I press on. And on. And on.

The pen never drops. I am still me. Sitting in silence.

Season One · Leaders · Story 10/12

The numbers got me. Four seconds. Twelve seconds. Twenty-seven seconds.

A product development process module, fifteen pages of the most boring material you have ever read. You also have to sign it. To confirm you understood it. That you really knew it. Rahul got that part done easily. In just four seconds. Lightning fast doomscrolling to reach the finish button that quick. I stared at the dashboard. I stared at his name. I stared at the column full of green checkmarks. Every single training finished two days ago, on Monday.

I’d asked him how the trainings were going. In our one-on-one call. That’s how it started.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m learning a lot.” Lie number one.

“Oh, that’s nice. Let’s be honest though, most are super boring. How are you progressing? I think there’s like more than 30.”

“I usually do one training a day. That’s enough time to really understand them.” Lie number two.

Well, he’s definitely saying the things I would want to hear as his manager.

Rahul was new. He joined less than a month ago. He’d come from one of the best universities in India. His resume rocked. His tech skills, I was told, were killing it. Due to a vacancy on my team, he got assigned to me, on short notice. We expected a lot.

The thing is I’m paranoid. He said the things I would want to hear. “I’m learning so much”, “I like the trainings”, “I invest a lot of time into boring stuff.” Well, something was definitely off.

So I double checked. Him. His answers. Looked at the training dashboard. Gut-feeling. Experience. Either.

He sits low in the chair. Leaning back, one ankle resting over the opposite knee. He’s barely looking at the Teams screen while I’m quiet. He slightly tilts his head every now and then. Smiling, a tiny touch of friendliness. A much bigger touch of superiority. I guess he learned how to look cool. He gives off the vibe of importance. That triggered my gut. Just as much.

“Something’s weird,” I finally said. “You finished all of them on Monday. I thought you did one each day?”

“Oh yes. On Monday I did many. It was a long day.” Lie number three.

And in an instant, the lazy lean-back is gone. The chill tilting smile too. Instead, he looks at the camera, looks at me. Watches. Intently.

“I see you finished nearly all of them in under thirty seconds.” I read him the numbers. Four. Twelve. Twenty-seven. “Some of these are fifteen pages or more.”

“Oh... I read some very fast.” Lie number four.

He didn’t flinch. He still looked very straight at me. Not smiling. But I saw it nonetheless. Well, I tell myself I saw it creeping in. The fear. Pushing the cool superiority out.

I’m obviously a sadist. I knew. Still let him spin up another lie to justify the previous ones. The way out was still there though.

“Let’s stop that Rahul, it’s impossible to read that fast. Are you lying to me about the trainings?”

“No, no, no, I just looked through the trainings on a very high level,” he said. Lie number five. “It’s OK. I will just do them again.”

As if we’re still talking about the trainings. As if I care right now whether he knows them or doesn’t.

“I asked whether you were lying to me. I’m giving you one last chance to be honest.”

Still sitting straight. Still not blinking. Still looking at me. The real deal now. The real fear.

“No worries. I’ll read them again. I promise. I’ll read them more slowly now.” Lie number six. No. That was honest. I guess.

Black screen. Done.

One week later, the whole team joins another Teams call. Short notice. My colleague and our twenty-five developers and test engineers. I told them all to attend. Some things cannot be buried in an email.

“Rahul is not working here anymore,” I said. “His last day was Friday.”

I told them, very straight, I didn’t care if they had no clue what to do, if they were still learning stuff or if they were the freaking best developer I’d ever hired. “You mess up, I’ll be cleaning the floor next to you. You lie to me, find the door.”

They were still. Silent. Twenty-five people looking at me. One, two, three, four, five. Six. It dragged on. The silence.

“Yeah, it’s ok Jonas,” one of the developers finally said. “We get it. It’s ok.”

And that was it. Nobody pushed back. Black screen. Done.

A few of them even came to me after the call, in private. Not to question it. But to tell me they liked what I did. That they respected me cutting a technical star. That I took a clear stance and told everyone openly.

I was right. They confirmed it. I believed them. I still do.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like that. I still do.

My boss wanted the short version. I gave him the lying part and the not-admitting part, clean and fast. Teams call, again. Us, looking at screens.

“Good decision. Good work.”

Same as always. Done correctly. That’s what I do. I was about to move on.

“One more thing though,” he said. “Next time I need you to go one level further.”

“What?”

He’s sitting there. In his chair in front of the camera. No lazy lying back. No superiority. No “I command you cause I can.” No intense staring at me either. No uncertainty or nervousness. He’s just sitting there. Comfortably.

“Rahul was lying. He wasn’t admitting it. But why? Did you ask him why he chose to lie?”

“What does it matter? I’d have let him go either way. There’s no good reason to lie. Not on trainings that are crucial for our company’s certifications.”

“True. The result wouldn’t have changed at all. But you’re a leader. I need you to understand your people. So next time, ask them.”

That bastard. Best boss I ever had. Everyone else told me how good I am. He told me when good wasn’t enough. Wasn’t finished.

Fuck, that hurt. Black screen. Done.

I got angry. Especially because I’m used to being right. All the time. Asking Rahul wouldn’t have changed anything. It would have been a waste of my time. Why should I feel sorry for a cheater? He lied to my face and then dared to just offer to redo the trainings. Like a totally normal clean-up-and-get-on-with-it job.

Underneath the anger, there’s that other voice though. Still. Quiet. Annoying as hell. Ask anyway. Care anyway. Even now. I would much rather stay right. My boss doesn’t let me have it that clean. Something spilled. Same lie, same result. Different humanity.

I know the numbers. Even today. Four, twelve, twenty-seven.

Maybe Rahul was terrified of authority. Maybe he was arrogant enough to believe everyone was stupid. Maybe he just didn’t care.

I don’t know. I never asked.

Season One · Leaders · Story 9/12

Five to one. Lunch is done. This is Germany. Meetings will start again. At one, sharp. The office is crawling back to life. Same as every office. Corporate life, rebooting. Coffee it is.

We’re standing in a small kitchen, next to our desks on the second floor. It’s packed in here. Half the company must have suddenly run from the canteen two floors down to squeeze in here. The food smells are strong, even up here. They have crept up the stairs. People carrying lunch back on their clothes. Sweetness, the sugar, the pastries. Garlic, that distinct smell, unavoidable.

This tiny kitchen owns the most important piece of equipment, the coffee machine. A typical automated company coffee machine. The machine grinds the beans. Hisses and spits. Working non-stop. A comforting routine. Watching the coffee being poured. Cup after cup. Anticipation is high. Or rather addiction.

The line is long. It always is at five to one. Five minutes until you’re late. You’ll need an excuse. You never know when these corporate machines decide to die. Without warning. They just stop. Mid-hiss. Then the beeping starts. The blinking. Frustration travelling backwards through the line. You need the caffeine. Now. Quickly.

The talks are good though. Nobody minds standing and chatting. The departments cluster around each other, all easily recognizable. You gravitate towards familiarity. There’s the backend people, their noise loud and cheerful, talking about weekend plans, festivals, music. And in-between the talkative people, the typical bathroom dance gives away a few sad souls. Five minutes left. Tick tock. The bio break announcing itself. Direly needed. The line is long, very long. The anxiety high, the caffeine addiction practically another smell on top of the garlic. Someone opens a window. Good idea. Fresh air to fight it off.

There he is.

Stefan. The man. Coffee cup in his hand. His corner office sits right behind the kitchen, so he strolls naturally around the corner. Unexpected. He catches us off guard. He wears his typical half-smile. I recognize it by now. Open. Approachable. Human. Inviting. He’s one of us. He’s not. He commutes in from hours away. Hired by the board for the hard stuff. He’s fired people. Relocated people. Reorganized departments. Decisions that changed where people worked and who they worked with. If they still worked here. Same half-smile through all of it.

“You guys having a good day.”

“Yeah.” “Great.” “Going fine so far.”

“What’s with the coffee machine? The line’s long today.”

“Don’t know.” “A lot of people.” “The townhall starts soon.”

“Oh well. I’ll get coffee later then.”

And he’s gone again. Made his entrance, chatted, socialized, yet another impression. Our chill chat disrupted, a little awe left behind. Mine included. I really need to get over authority.

A minute passes. Probably less. Then Maria comes around the corner. Unexpected again. Minus the awe.

What you need to know about Maria is this: She’s the kindest soul in the building, an angel. That’s not a compliment. It’s a fact. And she’s the last person you’d expect to skip any line. Which is what she does. Straight past the backend people. Past the bathroom break dancers. Past me. The cup in her hand.

“I’m really sorry, but I need to skip the line real quick.”

And everyone makes space, moves out of the way. Naturally. Politely. Warmly, even. Nobody hesitates. The line opens for her instantly. For the cup, to be specific. That piece of crowned porcelain. That nobody remembers crowning. That everyone recognizes anyway.

The machine stops, the hissing ends. Maria picks up the cup and disappears back around the corner. The easy chats are slow to pick back up again.

I don’t know if Stefan asked her. I never heard him ask. I’d bet stupid money he did. Maybe he didn’t even need to. If he had skipped the line himself, I would’ve happily stepped back. He’s busy. Important. Paid accordingly. That’s OK.

If you’re king enough to cut the line, be king enough to fucking cut it yourself.

Season One · Leaders · Story 8/12

The air smelled chemical. The chairs were designed for standing. Sitting reminded your spine you’re doing something wrong. Seriously, if you design chairs like this, at least sit in them once. Whiteboards on the walls. People had forgotten to erase their discussions. Decisions taken, decisions dried up.

The sun came in low, it was late afternoon. Late winter. The light rays illuminated the modern furniture. Picked their spotlight. It was on Malik today. A column of light painting his left side orange. I was sitting in the shadows. I wanted to stand up. I didn’t.

“The only reason I didn’t get the job is that I’m black.”

I stopped. Whatever I did right then. The room felt hotter suddenly. I wasn’t sure what to say. How to react at all.

He’d just accused a colleague of mine of racism. He went on to explain that this was why Lisa got the architect role. He just blurted it out like it was the most normal thing to say. As if I’d casually talk to him about that and respond.

Lisa got the job because she was clever. Not just clever. Insanely pro-active in finding technical solutions no one else thought about. Implementing the most complex solutions during a long evening. She’d happily take support and work with the team. The support she didn’t need herself. Communicating tech stuff to tech and non-tech people equally easy. Not just working with different teams, directing and helping all the time. Deeply respected by half of the company.

Did Malik seriously expect me to nod along to an accusation that severe against someone I knew well? To sympathize with him. I was furious. My face got stuck, went cold. Despite the hot room. The seconds ticking by, my brain turning, trying to rein myself in, preventing me from saying things I wouldn’t be able to take back. The warmth drained out of the room. Beneath my fury.

I’d been his manager for a few months by then. I came in quiet, as always. Watching, observing. Asking, every now and then. Finding the buried bodies. The deep and not-yet-cold ones. And Malik talked. God, Malik talked. More than anyone I’ve ever managed, before or since. Thirty minutes straight, often enough in our one-on-ones. Especially about private stuff. His childhood and his father and his father’s expectations. Fights, love, court. All parts of the stories. I knew more about Malik than I knew about some of my actual friends and I hadn’t asked for any of it. I didn’t even want to know these things. I just let him fill the silence. He liked filling the silence. Talking about himself. I let him. Maybe that was the source of his trust in me.

He was emotional. Deeply emotional. Not in a way of passionate LinkedIn posts about a new job. He felt things at full volume. When he was happy everyone felt it, I saw it happen. Every now and then. When he was frustrated everyone in earshot carried some of that home. He was good at his job too. Solid, delivered what he promised. Good enough to have, not good enough to miss though.

Still, there were other small things I had been observing in the few months I had taken over the team. They, the team, some of them were subtly avoiding him. Not aggressively. Or open. Not unfriendly. They ditched a conversation here and there though. They smiled, nodded, and then talked about something else.

And his previous managers, boy. They’d all told him he was doing great. Even one manager I personally respected very much and had learned tons from. Still, every single review. All of them, stretching back years. “Great employee”. “Strong technical skills”. “Good team player.” They’d wrapped him in warmth his whole career. Warmth that feels like caring but functions like neglect.

Yes, I know. That sentence sounds overly architected for the sole purpose of being used as a fancy Substack notes quote later. Still, I will argue it’s one of the truest things about management I have ever written.

Malik was so fundamentally wrong about Lisa. Which wasn’t even the point. The point was him being so fundamentally wrong about himself.

“I’m only going to say this once.” My voice came out surprisingly steady. Despite the fury. Let such an accusation sit unchallenged and it takes root. This whole thing was suddenly such a mess. And I was right in the middle of it.

“Your accusations are wrong. Completely unfounded. There is no place for racism in this team or any other team in the company. I will not have you throw around that stuff carelessly. There’s serious damage in these words.”

Surprise. His face. He’d probably been expecting sympathy and comfort. Warmth. The practiced, professional nod that commits to nothing. He didn’t expect me to be that clear, that cold.

“Then why? Why did Lisa get it?”

“Did you apply?”

“No. But neither did Lisa. They asked her. She told me.”

“Do you think you’re ready to be an architect?”

“Yes. All my previous managers told me I’m a great developer. I also did a specific course on software architecture last year and finished it with high grades.”

“I have a different opinion.” I leaned back. “You’re solid. You’re fine.” I let silence do its work. Fine. That word has probably cost people more years of their lives than any other word. “But you’re not outstanding. You’re a good intermediate developer. Not even a senior yet. You are not capable of handling complex features on your own. The others need to help you. You are not teaching and mentoring your younger colleagues. They are not looking to you for technical guidance.”

“That’s not true. I can show you—”

“I don’t know what your previous managers told you. But I think they took the easy way out.”

I waited. The ventilation system being the only thing to fill the quiet. “There’s another problem though. One that’s way more severe. The way you work with your team.”

He stared at me.

“Many team members are avoiding you. They only talk to you if they must. Some feel like you’ve backstabbed them. They say you care more about being right than the team’s success.”

“No.” He was quiet, very quiet. The ventilation though. “That can’t be.”

I said nothing.

He asked who said it. Which team members. He wanted names. He told me he couldn’t really believe it. The thought had never crossed his mind before. The warmth was too thick.

“Have you ever, like really, asked them what they actually think?”

“They’re happy working with me. We talk.”

“Are you sure your relationship with all of them is that good? That they’d really tell you?”

No answer.

“Go talk to them. Like, actually really talk to them. Ask them individually if they avoid you. Tell them you’d rather hear the truth. Tell them you won’t be angry or get into fighting mode.”

Nearly two months later, same room, slightly less chemical smell. The sun wasn’t as low, the shadows smaller. I was still hiding in them. Not only observing anymore. I didn’t see any hurt on Malik’s face. Nor any hint of rage. Not broken. I hadn’t in the last couple of weeks. I’d been worried I might have broken him, in the beginning. He told me he had sent out an anonymous survey to everyone on the team asking for honesty. He promised, and actually meant it, there’d be no consequences. This mattered. Maybe not to them. But to me. I believed him. After the survey, he talked to them one by one. He listened and he didn’t defend himself. He just took it. Well, that’s at least what he told me. So, probably semi-true.

He showed me the results on his laptop. The screen a rectangle of reflection in the orange light of the room. I heard him though. He read them to me. His colleagues said good things. Real things, not corporate things. How motivated he was. How much he cared. How he always got his things done on time. Reliably. That was all true, as true as things can be. I’d seen them myself.

They’d also said that working with him was annoying sometimes. That he created confusion, blocked things for reasons nobody understood. They named two occasions in which they felt like he seriously backstabbed them. Where he made the team look very bad in front of our stakeholders. When being right was more important to him than the team.

He showed me every sentence that I couldn’t read in the reflecting sunlight. He wasn’t embarrassed anymore. He was rather excited. It took him some time. First, back when I told him, I had noticed sadness. A lot of sadness. In the days following. But there was definitely excitement now.

“You see this? They never told me before.” He stopped. Looked at me.

He told me he was trying to improve. I believed him. He talked about concrete things, not intentions. Checking in with others before review meetings instead of after. Asking whether something was a team priority before he decided to get on with his own stuff. Having the team tell him when he was getting them off-track or delaying things again. Ensuring he spoke the same language as his team when talking to stakeholders.

He sat there and looked at me. Expectantly. Again, there was surprise. Genuine surprise. On my face. I had feared I might have broken him. Or at least whatever relationship we had started to have. I had feared him going batshit crazy defense mode. But no. So I told him I’d be there. To help. To give further feedback. To guide. To praise if earned. “You did really well. What you did takes guts. To actually ask your colleagues. And listen. Respect.”

Another few weeks later we had a retrospective online. That’s where software teams discuss what works and what doesn’t. It’s all about culture, quality, productivity, people, fights and takeaways.

Helen talked about a sticky she put up about meeting efficiency. Her voice soft, me turning up the volume of my speakers.

“I’ve noticed that Malik isn’t asking as many off-topic technical questions anymore in our refinements. Less distraction. I like that.”

Malik’s face lit up on screen. He looked fucking delighted. I am still unsure whether I let him get off the hook too easily. When he made those accusations.

The room though. The room will always feel wrong to me. Too hot.

Season One · Leaders · Story 7/12

The window is open. It always is. Even in winter, often enough. Even when the neighbors probably want to murder me. My music, the deep bass, a lot of noise. I need to feel the outside. Open. Not caged in.

Inside. My room. Rainbow vomit everywhere. The PC I built, glowing like a jellyfish swarm on meth. The walls, half of them painted by myself, a huge Death Stranding mural that looks like a lonely apocalypse, no hope left, the other half gaming posters, DragonBall comics and black hexagons. Just because I think hexagons are cool. My grandpa’s pocket watch lies behind me on the shelf. A plant on my left. I got it from my parents when I moved out. Eighteen years ago. The original one. Now there are two new editions of it. I’ve cut branches off, made smaller versions. They’re still small. And growing. I keep watering them. Sometimes. Not always.

And music. Always music. Right now, screaming. Lorna Shore. Or movie scores. TV series. The Rains of Castamere. Or piano. Ludovico Einaudi. Depends. On my mood. The Spotify algorithm.

I’m sitting here. I’m typing, writing, or supposed to write my sixth article. It wouldn’t be the first I abandoned. Abandoned ones don’t count, right? I think. I’ve published five. Five pieces of me, my brain, thrown into the void. And here I am, again. Staring at a blank page. Not fully blank anymore. Wondering why I am actually doing this. Writing.

Here we go. An article about me writing an article. About me. And beyond. As always, some meta stuff hidden inside. Stupid ramblings. Completely over the top. Weird. Wrong. Welcome.

I’m not a writer. I’m a tech person. Extremely logical. Studied mechanical engineering. Didn’t like it much. Preferred the theory, the physics, the maths over the tangible. Spent my whole life in software then. Yes, that doesn’t really fit either. But it’s systems, things that work or don’t. And I figure systems out. Pretty fast.

My job titles kept changing rapidly. Test Manager. Functional Owner. Project Manager. Product Manager. Scrum Master. Team Lead. Corporate life and such. They have names for everyone and everything. A promotion needs a new title, right. Beneath the job descriptions, my work stayed the same: people, products, pressure, decisions, consequences.

There’s no poetry in failed product launches. There’s no deep fancy metaphor in a database migration.

And yet.

I read like a maniac. Fantasy, first and foremost. The classic high fantasy, originally. Lately, grimdark. The brutal version, where everyone is morally grey. Everyone dies, maybe, and nobody wins for real. In English. Since I was a teenager. Not my first language. Books are cheaper in English. So, money saved, efficient. It stuck. Now I can’t even read German fantasy anymore. It sounds so painfully wrong. Unbearable.

The next song. Finally, piano. Nuvole Bianche. The algorithm. One minute somebody is brutally shouting at the existential end of the world, the next there is a lonely violin. Then Woodkid. That voice. To the Wilder. Thank you Mr. Hideo Kojima. Anyhow, too many puns. Stop it.

I also read business books. Every now and then. Startups, leadership, scrum, management. You know, the stuff I earned my money with, professionally. And the other side of the coin, personality, improvement, learning, how to make the best out of your fucking life. The genre that’s a billion-dollar industry. All helping people. Or claiming to. Sometimes they do. Me, at least. Or rather, I helped myself because of them. Difficult to distinguish.

I worked at BMW. Flew business class around the world. Conducted workshops with people in ties and dress shirts while I walked in wearing band shirts. The metal ones. The screaming kind, my dad would say. Man, did I believe I was cool.

Then I went to a hearing aid company. My grandma was nearly blind. Her hearing aids were the thread still connecting her to conversations, to jokes, to voices, to us humans. My grandparents passed away a couple of years ago. My grandpa was my second dad. We live in their house now.

I just got lost there for a second, while typing. I was looking sideways. The plants. Growing on my left. Not moving is what I see. Wait, I was supposed to be introducing myself. I think it’s going fine so far.

I have a wife. The house. Two little kids. The full package. So normal. So beautiful. So completely insane. Everyone said I would never do that. Move back to my hometown. I did. Little lessons every day, taught by tiny people who can’t tie their own shoes but surprisingly often know exactly when I’m full of shit. “Put your phone away, Papa.” The house though and the stuff that comes with it, gardening, maintenance. Nope. Not me. Never will be. That’s what I’m telling myself. As if I had never changed before. My son asked me last week why he can’t eat grass. I told him animals do that, not us. He stared at me, thinking. I don’t think he bought it. I guess he tried it later. Or already had.

I recently quit my job. Management wanted me in. In their circle. Working with them, for them. Told me I’m good. Very. I’m needed. I wanted them gone. Very. They stayed. I left. Probably the worst career decision of my life. Everyone told me it would be. They said “Don’t”. And I did. Maybe only to spite them. There is a part of me that hears “stupid” as “do it just because.”

I travel. Backpacking when I was younger. World trips. Six months off. New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia. More. So many more before, after and in between. So many favorites. Thought kids would end that life. Nope. We just take them with us. Last trip was Oman. I met a man there who invited us into his hometown while I was lying on a hospital bed. He made tea. At 2 a.m. Tasted absolutely delicious after I had thrown up all the chicken in the world. His friend and his friend’s dad showed us their camel farm. Farm sounds wrong. They have camels. And tents. Delicious coffee. Dates. Insert-amazing-adjective dates. His dad didn’t speak English. It didn’t matter.

Sports. Football all my childhood. Skiing before climate change objected. Bouldering for years. Kickboxing and Muay Thai. Many, many years. Thailand. Trail running lately. Mountains needing a stopwatch sounds legit, right. Surfing on holidays. I live in central Germany. That sucks. I coach kickboxing as well. And handball. Kids between nine and twelve. It’s hard to explain why. People who know me still don’t believe. But it’s true nonetheless.

I keep finding ways to move. Standing still feels deeply suspicious. Time ticks.

I am a driven person. Unhealthily driven. Borderline. Ask my wife how much stuff I come up with or get into. She’ll just laugh. Whatever I do pick up, though, I do at a thousand percent. There is no good enough. I outperform. People, things, common sense. I am naturally very good at what I do. Competitiveness. Arrogance. Both. Definitely both.

I am a winner.

And you realize what I do here, right? I name the arrogance myself. Before you can. Before it can even materialize in your brain. Makes me look self-aware. Vulnerable, even. I can open up, emotionally. Right?

That’s convenient. Conveniently architectured.

Maybe this entire article is controlled too. Maybe I decide what weakness you get to see. I might even consciously make it sound good. I am trying, true.

I know my armor. What it’s protecting though, that’s harder. So much harder.

The problem with winning is that it never answers what you were trying to prove. I have spent my life answering who I am with activities. It has worked. For a time, every now and then. Not always. Definitely not. Less, the older I get.

The plant is still here on my left. After eighteen years. The pocket watch is still there. Way older, decades old. Handed down through generations. The window is still open.

So. No job. What do I do now?

That stuff above. And the writing. This writing, now.

I hate those articles, the “10 Lessons I Learned” ones, the “5 Things You Must Do” ones. I’m no preacher. I don’t have all your solutions bookmarked. Or the truth, as if that even exists. So I tell stories. Things that happened. To me. Because of me. Things I notice. Oftentimes too late. Maybe people find something in them. Maybe they don’t. Not “they”, not “people”. It’s you, actually. Do you?

People try to divide private and business life. Screw that. You’re the same person. One set of eyes, two ears, one brain. One set of scars. Hard word that, scars. Implies pain. And memories. The latter I write about. Mostly work-related. Experiences. With or without pain. For now. Not because that could be more easily monetized later. You have to find your niche, right. It’s 2026. All these preachers keep saying. No, I want the work part out of my head.

There’s one thing I have learned so far though. Surprisingly. While writing.

The internet can still be human.

Let that stand there for a second.

Well, back into my brain. The messy, chaotic, beautiful craziness. Pouring out cadences of non-conforming sentences. Parts of sentences. It’s exhausting. Reading. My brain. No? I know, I live inside.

So, the dark side of writing: promoting it. People claim you should never be scared to do that. Still, there’s always reluctance. To stand up naked in a conference room full of people in ties. I may be exaggerating. I mean, look at this article. But I did it anyway. Or will do it. When I convince myself to push this article live. But then again I keep remembering these people, those complete strangers, who wrote comments on my articles so positive they looked completely suspicious. Networking. Sub-farming even. It crossed my mind. Why have I become so paranoid? Thank you, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I finally got rid of all of you last December. Anyhow, I read those heartwarming comments five times. I’m lying. Ten, some of them. Still feels hard to believe someone wrote this. A stranger. Let me read again.

I’m back. I keep refreshing my notifications. All day. I am not very proud of how much I do. Waking up in the morning, positively stressed. Maybe, just maybe, there is another one of those genuinely warm messages.

There is something about putting words into the world and waiting. The void, Substack people call it nowadays. You cannot force the result. You cannot outperform the silence. You publish and you sit here, me in my rainbow room, and you wait. Eventually you leave the room. But there’s still that smartphone with you. Beeping, notifying. A strange world we live in. A random person says something kind and you read it. Ten times. And you crave more.

I did not know how badly I wanted strangers to care. But wait, stop there. Do I really want that? Is this the real me? Or do I deliberately paint a picture of a vulnerable guy opening up to create sympathy and boost my ego in return. Which is still the same thing, I guess. Deflection. Another lofty layer of armor. Convenient, again.

So, who am I?

All of that. None of it. Depends, as always. Not on the algorithm. Not yet.

I called this newsletter Tracing Scars because I keep returning to the moments people dismiss as insignificant. The ones where something shifts, a small innocent thing, even after everyone has simply moved on. The tiny moments. The quiet moments. The invisible ones. I trace them. With unsteady fingers.

Oh, I also forgot the gaming part in my bio above. It’s thousands of hours lost. Or lived. Death Stranding is the best game ever made. The mural, you remember. This is not up for discussion. The Last of Us is close. I’ll admit that much.

The window is still open. As it is, most of the time. The summer air moves across the room, flows around me. I feel safe inside.

The room is quieter now. Finally. Spotify sometimes ends. The PC still glows. The HyperX rainbow microphone on my desk, still switched on, unused. My wife doesn’t hate my speakers. Definitely doesn’t love them either. She just shakes her head when the whole house shakes with my new subwoofer.

The plant, the clock, the rainbows. Me in the middle. Years, decades. Moving on, tick tock. My kids are growing up. Changing. In front of it all.

I don’t necessarily know where this goes. I no longer control what you make of it. Call me out on my bullshit. Help me put some dents in my armor.

I’m closing the window now. The page is full enough. Time to go outside.

Season One · Leaders · Story 6/12

I’m jumping on a Teams call with my boss. Our weekly one-on-one. I’m at home and it’s fall. Misty and typical October mood. The heating in our house has been on for a while. Temperatures dropped outside. Lately. Add the computers, monitors and speakers in my room to the floor heating and by lunch it feels like summer. So, I’m in sport shorts. The camera only shows my T-shirt anyhow. Who cares.

The video connects and I see my boss. Already back at whatever he did before he clicked “join”. His eyes are on his second monitor to his left. I say “Hi” to let him know I’m there. He’s in the new building they finished a few weeks ago. Fancy open floor, meeting rooms named after something I keep forgetting. One of those I see, blurred in my boss’s background. With a plant next to the door. A massive thing. A palm tree, I think. Inside a huge concrete-grey pot. It almost touches the ceiling. It must have taken years to grow that big. It’s been there from the start. Those bright green leaves create some sort of weird jungle feeling. Trust me, it’s really huge. And people walk by all the time. In and out of the meeting room. It’s very busy. Not unlike a jungle.

My boss is still on his second monitor when he responds with “Hi Jonas”. His eyes stay left. He is one of those extremely efficient guys who gets all his work done during other’s people’s meetings. I wait a couple of seconds. Silence, which is his trigger to go “So how is it going?”. Which is my trigger to update him on everything that went down last week. The usual procedure with us. In between I ask him about new hires. It takes him a moment to realize he needs to answer. And another moment to come up with one. “Yeah, I need to get an update on that.” Well, not the answer I needed. I let it go. Back to me talking. I’m fine with that. He leaves me alone, I get my work done and that’s the perfect trade. It works, that arrangement. His inattention, weirdly enough, feels like trust. It makes me confident. He’s not checking on me because he doesn’t need to.

Eventually, when I’m done, he looks over and says we still need to talk about this week’s status report.

Unusual. He doesn’t bring topics. He’s a reactor most of the time, not an initiator, at least with me. I bring things up. He nods. Asks a question or says “keep me posted” and we get done with it. Before time runs out.

“You are reporting too much yellow and red this week,” he says. “We need more green.”

I start explaining. I repeat what I mentioned earlier. We’re understaffed. We have scope that was never officially signed off officially. It was just dropped on us. I’m working with the business owners to get things de-scoped. That takes time, to get it done formally. Meanwhile the milestones are what they are. He cuts me off.

“No.” He looks at me intently. “The slide looks bad. It’s all yellow and red. That’s too negative. It sends the wrong message.”

I look at him. Him, covering parts of my favorite plant. In this meeting. Every week. The big not-moving jungle plant. With its huge green leaves. How much water it must need. I wonder how often someone must take care of it. To let it grow.

“But the status is yellow and red.”

“Well, that’s a different topic. We can discuss that.” He shifts. Just a little bit. “But it’s more important right now to send the message that we are handling our stuff. That we are on top of things. We need management to trust us.”

Six months earlier this guy had been given the majority of the new product. It was a big deal internally. The whole corporate promotion package came along with it. He was the person they selected to build something big because his track record said he would. I’d looked him up when I got moved to him. Fancy company A, then a VP role at another one (let’s call it company B), then poached back. Even fancier company C. Or D. Whatever, it’s that CV with a move up every two years. Bigger team. Better title. Rocket-like.

“So you’re asking me to lie.”

“Don’t twist my words.” He responds tightly.

“I’m not.”

He’s quiet. Looks at me. I don’t say anything else. I’m used to silence. As a tool. Usually, I can hold it. Let the other one speak first. Even when I’m angry. I look at the palm tree again. Unconsciously. Drifting off a little bit, mentally, thinking, is anyone dusting off these huge leaves? He doesn’t answer. And I’m really, really pissed. So, he wins. I finally end the silence. I shouldn’t have.

“If you want green lights, go to the meeting and present them yourself. I won’t.”

He went. He presented. He reported green. Painted his picture of do-not-eat green. Not all green, but mostly. PowerPoint green. And I, I stopped looking up to him.

I don’t know what he said in the meeting. I didn’t go. I’d been the one presenting the report for eight months. I also didn’t go the next time. Eventually, I got dropped from the invite. My boss had it handled. That was it. Nobody asked. Nobody explained. It had been mine. Now it wasn’t anymore. Professionally handed over.

Our one-on-ones continued. Same online meeting, same time, same background. But he stopped bringing substance. Not like he had brought much before. He’d ask how I was doing. I’d say fine and he’d say good. Then we’d wait. He’d sometimes fish for information he needed for the status report. At least he wrote it himself, I’ll give him that, and didn’t ask me to prepare it. The clock became my best friend in these meetings. I counted. A lot. At some point he’d finally say “alright, anything else?” and I’d answer no. The screen would go black. The plant would disappear.

The irony of that. The plant shining green. Mocking me. Writing this, I almost started making some clever metaphor about leadership, growth, nurturing and so on. How trust needs watering. That would’ve been unbearable. And way too corny. You get the message.

Still, the plant was there. Every week. Every one-on-one. Showing me green. Without dust. And no paint. Reliably.

I stayed another couple of months. I did good work. As I always do. But the things that had made the job mine gradually felt like being pulled away from me. One by one, not dramatically, just quietly. Someone else included in some meetings. Someone else to take care of an ad-hoc topic. Someone else got asked for my opinion.

I was still on the team. Or rather on the payroll. That term fit better. I was still there. Somehow also not really there anymore. He remained above me for another couple of months. Mostly on the org chart.

It’s a strange thing, being slowly removed without being told about. It would have been easy to put all the blame on my boss. I mean how shitty is such a move? The thing is, the paint job worked. Taking care of something takes years. Painting it green takes one meeting. So they started trusting him. All but me. His reputation stayed as good as it ever was. Improved even. He’d surely take the next step once his two years were done.

In a system that works. Or doesn’t. I don’t know. Intelligence, reckless and shady. That is him. I’ll give him that.

I quit in early spring. March, I think. Most of me had left months earlier, one meeting at a time. Our last Teams call just started. Same background. Same plant. Still cool outside. Still shorts. Electronics, you remember. For some reason the flat light in his office was bright this time, harsh, making webcams overexpose. The image hurting to look at. I told him I was leaving. He nodded. He said he understood, that these things happen, that he’d always valued my work. The standard speech. He knew it by heart. It’s always the same. I remember that his eyes still went left. Something more important than this conversation. He handled it while he was saying goodbye.

I said thanks. He said he wished me well. The clock ticked. The screen went dark.

The plant disappeared from my view. Bright green. With no paint.

Someone was taking care of it.

Season One · Leaders · Story 5/12

The windows were closed because it was winter. A few snowflakes drifted by outside. Big and slow. Frost was creeping in from the edges of the glass. Inside, the air was thick with breath and sweat. The powerful beats from the speakers vibrated through the dense atmosphere. The room had been a schoolroom once. Now it was a gym with heavy bags hanging from the ceiling and fighting logos on the floor. Boxing gloves and shin guards in every color and design waited on hooks along the wall. It smelled like effort. The honest, unglamorous scent of normal people.

Along one wall, a mirror ran along the full length of the wall. It reflected everyone and everything. It showed all of us going through the same training combinations at slightly different speeds. The coach moved between us while we adjusted our stances, the angles and directions of our kicks and punches. One, two, three. He made sure we were performing close to perfection. When he spoke, everyone naturally stopped and listened to him. He did not have to ask for attention although he wasn’t our regular coach. He was a black belt. A former champion. He had the kind of speed that felt like cheating if he were my age. He’s nearly 20 years older. I wondered how many decades it took to make it look that easy. Or if physics had just made a personal exception for him. I’d been kickboxing long enough to recognize mastery.

He wanted the job. He was auditioning. We were the audition. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no money for the trainer’s job. It’s not really a job. We’re a small local gym. Still, he wanted it.

“Jab. Cross and step in. Body hook. Roundhouse kick. Move out fast. Full speed. Explosiveness is key,” he explained.

We nodded. We were trying to remember the new sequence while our lungs were still catching up from the last combination. There was no room for anything else. That’s what the sport does to me. Getting lost in the void of concentration.

We had paired up. We went through these drills to learn how to make our combinations flow smoothly. Your partner isn’t your opponent. You defend yourself with your boxing gloves and shin guards. You feel the strikes land cleanly, the distance being right, you staying in control. You’re not worried. You know your partner is working with you.

The coach walked between the pairs. Correcting. He stopped next to me. “Not like that,” he said. Not unkindly. The way someone says something they’ve said a thousand times. Jab. Cross. Body hook. Roundhouse kick. I repeated in my head. Prepared the movement. I visualized the whole sequence while the coach was still talking. He stepped into my partner’s spot to demonstrate. I was ready. Everyone else around me kept moving, hitting, blocking, breathing. Noise and music mingled together.

I blocked the jab. The cross. He wasn’t wearing gloves. I felt his fists through my gloves. Through the padding. He was fast. And powerful.

And then the roundhouse kick. Too powerful. It landed on my left elbow.

For a few seconds I couldn’t move my arm. The kind of pain that’s suddenly there. Or you know it is before you fully feel it. I stood there holding my arm away from my body, trying to put together what had just happened with what was supposed to happen. This was a partner exercise. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Not like this. Not with no shin guards.

He didn’t understand why I was grimacing. He said he hardly touched me. He said it like it was obvious. Like my pain was my misconception. Like the problem was my arm, not his kick. I said nothing. My partner said nothing. I was a student. He was the black belt. The former champion. And somewhere in that hierarchy of the room, my elbow didn’t have a vote.

In the mirror, I saw myself stretching my arm. I was going to push through the pain. What else was there? In the mirror, I also saw everyone else. Training. Their raw power, controlled. Everyone lost in concentration, for now.

I love this sport. I love the control it demands of people who can hurt each other and choose not to. That’s the deal in partner drills. You don’t fight each other. You teach and learn. Together. One of the purest forms of respect.

Half an hour later I was exhausted. And still hurting. But I was happy. We moved on. Next combination. “Jab. Cross. Knee.” Defense against a knee. One, two, three.

Then a voice cut through the concentration. “Are you okay?” Someone was on the floor. Not fully on the floor. Propped up on one elbow. Sideways. Holding himself steady with his other hand. Shaking his head a little bit. His eyes wandering around the floor. Seeing, but not recognizing.

A guy named Daniel. He’d been training with us for a few weeks. Still new. Still learning where to put his feet. The hands and knees in the room slowly stopped moving. The music didn’t.

Daniel wasn’t getting up. He was hurt. Very obviously. The coach stood beside him. The rest of us watched. And then the coach spoke.

“Why did he take down his guard?”

He said it like it was the most natural question in the room. Like the problem wasn’t what had happened. Like the problem was what Daniel had failed to do. He said it to Martin, our main coach. Martin, who was close by and came over. Not to Daniel.

My elbow was throbbing. Daniel was on the floor. Nobody spoke. We were breathing more slowly now, more rhythmically. A hint of worry creeping in after the excitement of the last drill.

He had asked why Daniel lowered his guard. Sometimes trust is the only mistake people make.

I don’t remember what Martin responded. Only that he said something. And that sealed it. He has a natural authority that everyone simply respects.

Daniel got up. Very slowly. Painfully slowly. He walked to the bench at the side of the room and sat down, bent forward, his head in his hands. I wasn’t sure if he was hiding his face. Embarrassment, maybe. He should have been angry. I thought about it and wasn’t sure. Martin went back to his own exercises. Faster than I expected. The visiting coach stood there a moment longer. Then he also turned and began correcting another pair. Daniel sat there for the rest of the session. The next training, he did not come back. He never did.

I had watched. A voiceless witness. Eight years into the sport and still deferring to the black belt. I was shut down by his behavior. His confidence that made me swallow. I should have known better. I knew better. My elbow knew better.

He had lost control. We were the ones adjusting. What a weird shift of perception by an authority refusing to examine his own failure.

My partner and I found our positions again. I hauled my left arm up to guard myself. Somehow I managed. Jab, cross, knee. Then I blocked. Again. Rhythmically. And in between I stole some glances over at Daniel. With his head in his hands. We kept going. Every now and then I failed to block and got hit. I noticed but didn’t care as much as I should have. I threw my punches a little slower.

The music was still playing. The mirror was still there, reflecting everyone. I caught a girl watching herself in the mirror. It helps to see yourself sweat, hurt and push through. Satisfaction and such. Another guy looked into the mirror just to see himself. Liking what looked back. His biceps. Ego and such. The mirror showed everyone what they wanted to look at. The same people. The same room. The same reality that the coach’s powerful certainty bent around his own version.

I spoke to Martin afterwards. I told him I was worried. The exact words don’t matter. His explanation was that the coach came from a more professional place. He was used to harder training. Different standards. We were lucky to get the chance to learn from him.

He got the job.

My elbow got better. The room did not look emptier without Daniel. There were still enough people in the picture. Reflections.

A room doesn’t need to look empty to have lost someone.

The mirror was still full.

Season One · Leaders · Story 4/12

The room was too warm and the chairs were too low and Marc sat in his like he was trying to take up less space than he’d been given. He wasn’t slouching exactly. Slouching implies laziness. Marc was the opposite of lazy. He just didn’t think he deserved the full footprint of his own body.

I’d called him in to tell him he should apply for the manager role that had opened up two floors down. The seat had been empty for a while. HR was circulating the listing again. Marc’s name had come up zero times in the conversations I’d been in. He wasn’t on anyone’s radar. He was good and he was invisible.

“Me.”

Not a question. A diagnosis.

“Yeah. You.”

He looked at the floor, still trying to work out whether I meant it.

I told him why. Not in generalities. Specifics. The way he’d kept the project moving after everyone else had started treating the delay as inevitable and our stakeholders had stopped believing our dates. Marc just kept showing up. The way he listened in meetings when people twice his rank were talking over each other and then said one thing at the end that made everyone stop. The way he didn’t need to be right in public.

He shook his head.

“I don’t have the experience.”

“You have.”

“This is not a junior role.”

“I know.”

“You really think I could do this?”

I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t. He didn’t say anything for a moment. He said he’d think about it. He applied.

By the time someone looks ready to everyone, the difficult part of seeing them is already over.

A year later Marc is sitting across from me. Different building, different floor, different room, but the same room. The chairs are still too low.

He got the job. Now he’s showing me what he learned. Some of his first one-on-ones felt staged. Artificial. He had over-prepared them, tried to follow a script. Eventually he stopped trying to conduct them correctly. The man across from me is not the man I sat across from a year ago. His shoulders fill the chair now. His voice doesn’t trail off at the ends of sentences. When he says something he believes, he doesn’t look at the floor after he says it.

He’s prepared a document. A manager’s retrospective. What I Learned in My First Year. He shares it with me. I open it. Setting clear expectations early. Giving honest feedback and making a habit of it. Catch people doing something right. Especially the reserved ones. Find a personal connection with every team member, whatever that connection is.

I read through the list. He watches my face while I read. There’s one that stops me. Find a personal connection with every team member. Whatever that connection is. I point at it.

“It’s rare,” I tell him. “Most young managers don’t put much emphasis on that.”

Marc looks at the screen. Then at me.

“You told me that.”

“When I started. The first weeks. You were helping me onboard. You said exactly that.”

I have no memory of saying it. No. I have no memory of the conversation. But I recognize the thought. It sounds like me. And I forgot. Most of what you give people disappears from your view. You don’t get the report.

Marc was grinning. Not politely.

I was embarrassed. I tried to find something to say. Didn’t. Marc kept grinning until I surrendered.

We moved on.

Season One · Leaders · Story 3/12

The meeting invite said quarterly townhall. Hundreds of people on a Teams call. The kind of meeting that arrives in your calendar with a title that sounds transparent and a body that says nothing but agenda will follow. The agenda never followed. I have been in these meetings before, in this company, in other companies. The names change. The invite always stays the same.

People logged in early. I logged in early. Not out of enthusiasm. We logged in early because Teams prominently shows the first joiners, and joining early means being seen. Specifically in a recorded meeting, and being seen somehow started to mean something in this company. Especially in the meetings staged to look important. Those, when the agenda never follows.

The Teams tiles populated one by one. Faces flickered into place, then the grey circles with initials where faces should have been. MS. JD. AK. The alphabet of a company that still believed showing up meant the same thing it used to.

Most cameras stayed off. Mine stayed off. That was the norm now. A few people turned theirs on, the ones who were still used to our old ways. Or maybe they hadn’t yet learned that a camera in a townhall is a one-way mirror. Anyhow, some with pictures in their backgrounds, some with blurred backgrounds: a kitchen, the corner of a bed, a bookshelf curated just enough to look uncurated. Normal life bleeding through. The detail that reminded you these were people, not tiles.

The boss sat in a meeting room with his directs. The leadership team. Eight of them around a polished table, close enough to touch. Their bodies angled toward the camera at the head of the room, implying the boss was addressing everyone equally. The shot had been carefully arranged. The team appeared unified, aligned, a unit facing outward together. Laughing, before the meeting officially started. Insider jokes, casually. And honestly, I almost believed it. For the first six seconds. Then my brain caught up with what my eyes had already registered: a room of people in the same physical space reads as a faction, an alliance. Scattered faces in separate homes read as adversaries. They were a unit and we were a list. HD. UK. OL.

He started with praise. The big boss.

How well we had worked. How open we were to new challenges. Our motivation. Our dedication. Our skills. He’s so thankful to be part of this, part of us. Our family. The words came in the cadence of someone who had practiced them, which meant he hadn’t felt them. You can tell. People can always tell. The difference between a sentence that rises from the body and one that was arranged on a page is not subtle. It lives in the timing, in the space between words, in the way a voice holds something it believes versus something it needs you to believe.

I had heard this cadence before. I had probably delivered it myself. Many times. Different meeting, different company, different job. Or maybe same company and same job. Corporate language changes every few years. The pattern never does: sentences polished smoother than the people saying them.

He described the business landscape. Headwinds. Competitive pressure. The usual urgency. Finances. The story companies put up when they’re about to do something they’d rather not have examined. He told us we were on the verge of something major. Big wins ahead. Money. The language of unity, of common ground, we are all in this together spoken in the register of someone who has never been in anything with the people he’s addressing.

And somewhere in the grid, these hundreds of people heard the hint of something that was about to hurt them before they knew what it was. A slight tightening in the chest. Hands that had been typing messages going still. The kind of attention that isn’t attention anymore but fearful waiting. The alert stillness of an animal that has caught a scent it doesn’t have a name for yet.

Everyone was waiting.

The boss kept going. Lean. Agile. Flat. Efficiency. Doors always open. The corporate liturgy that means exactly nothing until it means something, and by then you’re already inside it, already past the moment when you might have noticed, might have asked what all these words were standing in for.

He put up a slide.

Org chart. Names struck through. The names glowed on the screen beside him, and the silence in the grid shifted from waiting to something heavier. My coffee had gone cold. I don’t know when. I had stopped drinking it somewhere between headwinds and competitive pressure.

I also needed to pee. I had needed to pee for twenty minutes. I was not going to get up and walk to the bathroom, because walking to the bathroom meant stepping away from the screen, and stepping away from the screen in a meeting like this was like closing your eyes during the one scene in the movie everyone will be talking about tomorrow. So I sat there, bladder full, coffee cold, watching a man use the word efficiency the way other people use a weapon they never learned to handle.

“We have too many managers,” he said. “We need to remove some.”

The names struck through were people who had been there for many years. Decades maybe.

They were the ones who had given the company years it had already forgotten how to count. Not because anyone asked them to. They’d wanted to, quietly. The kind of managers who didn’t need to boast about their doors being open because their doors were never closed. The kind who remembered your kid’s name and your spouse’s surgery and who checked in not because anyone told them to but because they’d been you once and someone had checked in on them. They cared.

These were the names struck through.

The boss said it was about efficiency. The slight tilt of the head, the pause before the hard words, the modulated softness that is supposed to signal how difficult this is for him, the open hands that close again too quickly. He was selling difficulty. Or he was selling the performance of difficulty, something else entirely. He never looked at the names. He talked about the boxes. Once his voice dipped, just a half-tone, and the next word wasn’t there. Then it was. He found it and kept going.

We had watched him set this up. For months. The new hire from a previous life. Someone he had liked before he liked anyone here. New layer at the top. New salary. Old layer at the bottom. The sound of a stone dropping into water. I mean, the logic is simple enough. Hire new, unhire old. A follower instead of an obstacle. Frighteningly obvious. Insultingly obvious.

But he stood there and said efficiency. He said lean. He said agile. He opened his hands, again, in a gesture of transparency, of reluctance, of this-hurts-me-too, and the few faces still on camera looked back at him with something that had moved past anger into something colder. Something that had stopped listening to words and started watching the consequence of them.

Someone in the chat typed a laughing emoji. Just one. Then nothing. Then the chat woke back up.

Not questions. Not anger. Laughter. Or not laughter. Recognition. Jokes that hide something. Self-protection. Pain. Or not that either. The sound people make when a suspicion they’ve been carrying for months suddenly has a name and a slide deck.

The cameras started going grey. HG. Not all at once. One by one. FP, DE. VG. Like lights in a building being turned off from the top floor down. The gallery shrank. Faces replaced by grey circles. BC. The few who stayed on camera looked different now. Not brave, just exposed, their faces carrying what the grey circles had the dignity to hide.

The direct reports in the room hadn’t moved. They were the most compromised people in the frame. They sat at the same table as the big boss, within the shot, within the geometry of unity someone had been careful to arrange. Their faces were blank in the way of people who have decided that survival requires stillness. One of them looked down at his laptop. Another stared at a fixed point on the wall above the camera, not meeting anyone’s eyes. A third, the newest, the one who had been in this position for mere months, kept glancing at the boss’s profile like a passenger watching the pilot, trying to read whether this was turbulence or the beginning of something worse.

The chat messages now kept coming. Private messages obviously, not the main channel. The real conversation had migrated to the places the boss couldn’t see. People who had worked together for years but never spoken outside of meetings were suddenly in each other’s DMs, united by the intimacy of having watched the same thing happen at the same moment.

I was in three group chats by then. I don’t know how. I had not said anything. This is the thing about a betrayal broadcast live: the chats find you.

Did you know? No. You? Saw it coming six months ago. What do we do. The question mark missing. Not a question anymore. A recognition.

The boss kept talking. He hadn’t noticed the cameras. Or he had and he’d decided to push through anyway, which was worse. His voice filled the silence the way a speaker fills an empty room. Same volume, same conviction, no one receiving it. He was still selling. Still performing the cost of a decision he had already dressed in the language of necessity. The slide still glowed behind him. The names. Struck through.

Trust doesn’t announce its departure. It doesn’t slam doors or send notice. It leaves quietly, in the moment between one camera and the next. It leaves in the breath between one sentence and the one that was supposed to follow but never will. It leaves in the private messages that say more in their silences than in their words. It leaves in the hands that don’t type in the meeting chat, the mouths that don’t open to ask questions live, the bodies that stay still, stay hidden behind HG, VK, CD. Because movement would be acknowledgment and acknowledgment would be unbearable.

The last camera switched off. TK.

Season One · Leaders · Story 2/12

The bass was too loud and the floor was sticky and outside, past the glass doors, a golf course sat in the dark like an inside joke between people with more money than sense. I was dancing with fifteen people I’d met two days earlier. Semi-Drunk. Not the performative drunk of corporate bonding where everyone pretends to be looser than they are. The real thing. The kind where you forget your phone exists.

The club was located in a suburb of a city whose name I could find on a map but couldn’t pronounce with any confidence. The air conditioning was losing a war and the floor was the particular sticky of spilled drinks and bad decisions and nobody cared. Nobody had cared for hours.

Raj was showing me a shoulder movement that made him look like a man who had never been self-conscious in his life and made me look like a man who had never encountered his own shoulders before. Priya was laughing. Not the laugh of someone indulging a foreign guest. The laugh you give a friend who is humiliating himself and the humiliation is the point. I was humiliating myself. The dancing. The shoulders. The whole thing.

They’d been shy. Two days earlier. When we first walked into the room and they sat with their hands in their laps and said yes, yes, yes to everything before we’d even finished asking.

The workshop was in a new tower. Glass and steel. The kind of building that looks like a render even when you’re standing inside it, whatever floor, the number stopped meaning anything after the elevator had been climbing long enough. The windows overlooked construction. Cranes. Half-finished concrete.

I’d flown in from Germany with a small team. Project kickoff. The phrase arrives in the room before you do. It carries a weight that rearranges bodies around tables. The room sat with their hands in their laps, laptops open, pens aligned, notepads fresh, water bottles at calibrated intervals. Everything positioned to capture the important information that was about to be delivered from on high.

The room behaved as though hierarchy had entered before we did. These people flew here from Europe. These people are your superiors. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not disagree. Do not be yourself.

Not today, I said. We’re not going to talk about the project.

Yes, yes, yes.

The reflex. The confirmation that means: I am still processing but I have learned to fill the processing time with agreement. The yes that isn’t agreement. It’s survival. The muscle memory of people who have been managed by people who never saw them.

The yes is a door that closes from the inside while appearing to open. I’ve been in rooms where the yes was real and rooms where the yes was armor. The difference isn’t subtle once you’ve learned to feel it. The real yes leans forward. It interrupts. The armor yes sits still and waits for the next instruction.

I knew what I was doing. I’d done it before. Not in this room, not with these people, but the shape of it. Walk in. Close the laptop. Metaphorically. I never bring one on the first day. Watch the confusion resolve into something else. The colleagues I’d brought with me had seen this movie. They knew me well enough to trust whatever I’d pull out of the air. I was strategic about it. I wanted the room to exhale because an exhaled room builds better products than a room holding its breath. I also wanted to know these people. Sincerely. Both things were true at the same time.

So we played games.

Stupid games. Name games. The kind where you throw balls. Hit people with newspapers to learn their name. And be punished for it. Get it wrong, everyone laughs. Get it right, everyone cheers. They were awkward. I was awkward. There’s a particular discomfort in standing in front of fifteen people who are waiting for your expertise and offering them a ball, a newspaper and a circle and the instruction to remember each other’s names. I felt like a children’s entertainer who’d wandered into the wrong conference room.

They looked at each other. Looked at me. Looked at the ball. The silence was the kind where you can hear every air conditioning vent in the building. And then Raj hit Priya. She got caught and she laughed and the room exhaled.

I learned that Raj has a daughter who just started school and he’s terrified he’s missing it. That Priya wanted to be a singer and her father wanted her to be an engineer and she became an engineer and she will never not wonder. That Vikram’s wife is pregnant and he hasn’t told anyone at work because he wasn’t sure that was the kind of thing you told people at work on the first day.

I learned all of this on the first day. Not because I’m good at reading people. Because when you ask, and you actually wait for the answer, people tell you things.

The second day we asked different questions. Not deliverables. Not milestones. Not risk registers.

What country would you travel to. What do you hope for.

What are you good at. What are you afraid of.

What do you want people to say about you when you leave the room.

The room had changed. The room wasn’t saying yes anymore. They were thinking. The thinking moved across their faces like weather.

Vikram spoke first. The one whose wife was pregnant. He said: why do you care?

Not a challenge. The tone was wrong for a challenge. The tone of someone examining a gift for the hidden catch. The tone of someone who has learned, across many rooms and many managers, that curiosity from above is usually the preface to something that will cost him.

I didn’t have a good answer. I said something about not being able to lead people I don’t know. It sounded like a LinkedIn post. The ones I don’t write. I meant it, but it sounded like a LinkedIn post, and everyone in the room had read enough LinkedIn posts to know the difference between a line and a person. Vikram nodded. Not the yes-yes-yes nod. A different one.

I don’t have a specific leadership philosophy. I don’t have a specific framework. I was curious about fifteen people I was about to spend a year working with and I didn’t know how else to satisfy that curiosity except to ask them things and shut up and listen.

By the end of the second day someone had drawn a diagram on the whiteboard that had nothing to do with the project. Someone else had crossed it out and drawn a different one. There was an argument happening. A real argument. About priorities and ownership and who should lead what. The argument was loud and productive and it was the sound of fifteen people who had stopped being afraid of each other.

And then we went dancing.

The golf course in the dark. The sticky floor. The music too loud. Raj’s shoulders and Priya’s laugh and my phone in my pocket with four hours of silence I wouldn’t discover until morning.

The Europeans were dancing too. All of them. The one who told me on the plane that he doesn’t like Indian food. The one who never dances at company events. The one who’d been in these rooms with me before, who’d seen me close the non-existent laptop and wait, and this time was no different. He was dancing next to Vikram and neither of them was thinking about reporting lines.

At 1:47 in the morning I stepped outside. The heat hit me, that particular Indian night heat that doesn’t cool down, just gets less aggressive. The golf course was still there, still dark, still absurd. The sprinklers had come on, painting nonsense in the dark, the water catching light from the glass doors while the bass bled through behind me.

I stood there. Drunk. Semi-drunk. Maybe drunk. The good kind. The kind where you’re not going to regret anything tomorrow but you’re definitely not driving anywhere. As if I’d drive a car in India. Sober.

Season One · Leaders · Story 1/12