There's a risk to this approach. I tried it twice (with ~3 year gap in between), and twice I lost myself and had to re-train to be my usual self. Bad habits ar

There's a risk to this approach. I tried it twice (with ~3 year gap in between), and twice I lost myself and had to re-train to be my usual self. Bad habits are contagious, momentum gets lost. Conformity is a strong force. I've been lucky to have great leadership to learn from and model, and who've taken time to guide me through why things couldn't be fixed at a certain point in time - or plain asked for patience and scheduled time to devote to my concerns. Given good developers are pretty much in demand, I think we can afford to stay true to ourselves most of the time and just shop around for leadership that suits our style.