I'm fairly aware that the about half the management at this job thought I was inscrutable. Someone who kind of knew me was interviewing for a position and asked

I'm fairly aware that the about half the management at this job thought I was inscrutable. Someone who kind of knew me was interviewing for a position and asked my boss about me. His reply was something to the effect of "He's the genius who we leave alone in the corner while he does mad science experiments." I guess it's complimentary in a way, but I can articulate exactly what I did in a way that my mom, who is an artist and barely uses a computer, can understand. I think a lot of the problem is that some managers are really inflexible. They only know one way of management, and if that doesn't work they don't know what to do. They are a lot like teachers in that regard. We've all had teachers who could only explain things one way, and they constantly confused students who didn't grasp that explanation. I even got my boss and HR to admit that I was really self-aware, and was able to articulate what I needed to succeed. It was like that meme where you break a logical explanation down into atomic parts and get them to agree with every step along the way, but they just said "no" to the conclusion. I guess it's maybe an example of the Peter Principle in action.