For a while I reread William Langwiesche's 2003 article in The Atlantic* about Columbia's last flight[1] every year or so. I find it very easy to empathize with

For a while I reread William Langwiesche's 2003 article in The Atlantic* about Columbia's last flight[1] every year or so. I find it very easy to empathize with the insiders who actually understand all of the minutiae and imagine the frustration of dealing with outsiders who didn't understand any of the details or all the decision processes you and your team had already been through. The point was that I didn't want to make the same mistakes, and I wanted to remind myself to be wary of "inside scoop" types of opinions, or placing too much weight on "reports from the frontlines", because I recognized that I was overly biased in this direction. Outsiders views, or fresh perspectives, as well as insights from a big picture also have value. Every long gone institution or industry that now seems absurd with hindsight, also necessarily had some internal logic if it ever existed for decades. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/columbias-last-flight/304204/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/columbi...