> Boss approval is literally everything. This is such a sad corporate loser mentality. Bosses are humans. They can be wrong. They can be convinced. Even manip

> Boss approval is literally everything. This is such a sad corporate loser mentality. Bosses are humans. They can be wrong. They can be convinced. Even manipulated, if that's your game. > you’re hired for a job. You’re a glorified and well compensated code monkey Only if you choose to treat yourself like one. I'm hired for my domain expertise that my bosses lack. I can understand 60-80% of their domain, they can understand 5% of my domain. When I'm saying that feature that they want is a nice-to-have and I don't want to build it unless I see evidence of it's value, they usually listen. > I’ve yet to meet any hierarchy chains that are truly open minded to a low level IC saying anything that counters them I worked at multiple startups (between 4 and 100 in size) and I always had a voice, even early in my career. Maybe you're the problem? > you’ll become a bootlicker and actually make progress in your career rather than being stuck in senior/staff Where exactly does the bootlicker progress? A code monkey doesn't become VP/C-level through bootlicking, there are plenty others with much better soft skills. At best you'll be a code monkey turned manager (which is worse than staff).