The keyboard didn’t stop clicking. Sarah-brightest engineer in the room, twenty-three years old-didn’t even look up when I mentioned the safety monitoring system, the 9-year-old stack that manages half a billion in recurring revenue. “The legacy platform, Ken?” The condensation hung in the air like ozone before a storm. I knew the conversation before it even began, the precise coordinates of the impending pushback.

I was trying to hand her the keys to the critical, 9-year-old heart of the business-the thing that actually keeps the lights on and the data stream clean. She wanted the new AI initiative, the one involving computer vision and decentralized cloud processing. It’s the same script every quarter: We launch, we declare victory, and then we leave the actual foundational stuff to the people who couldn’t escape the initial assignment, or worse, to the lone wolf senior architect who is perpetually three days from burnout. We are building a world that is technologically dazzling, resting on wet tissue paper.

The cuff felt stiff against my wrist, starched maybe two cycles too aggressively, which was precisely the point. Not comfort, but communication. The immediate tension wasn’t physical, though; it was the psychological burden of confirming whether this particular shade of dusty olive signaled ‘quiet luxury’ (approachable but established) or ‘creative entrepreneur’ (unreliable but visionary) for the 9:41 AM networking coffee.

I hate this. I genuinely resent the fact that getting dressed has transitioned from a routine self-expression-a casual, instinctive sorting of textiles and colors that pleased me-into a daily, high-stakes exercise in audience segmentation and strategic signaling. It feels like performance art for an invisible, judgmental board of directors. Yet, I stood there, ignoring the shirt I actually liked-a perfectly worn indigo chambray-because it lacked the necessary ‘narrative arc.’ I criticize this commodification fiercely, I write about the death of authenticity, and yet, here I am, agonizing over a watch choice based purely on its perceived signaling value to a stranger who sells enterprise software. The hypocrisy is the anchor I drag every morning.

It wasn’t a sudden shift, but a slow, insidious creep,