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I’ll tell you this much. There’s great utility in pretending to be an idiot. Because if you display anything that demonstrates intelligence, competence or virtue, then people beat on your ass constantly to solve their problems and you become the explanation for why things are a problem to begin with. Because you have the power to fix things and choose not to. There’s a small handful of things I know how to do that I’ve hidden from virtually everybody throughout my life because if they knew about it, everyone would be completely up my ass about it. I learned that mistake a long time ago and nobody would ever leave me alone. I just let people draw false conclusions about me all the time and I just look over at them and smirk after they have their back turned to me and leave.
A friend of mine who’s a software developer once joked with me about how the hiring manager above him was an idiot and blamed him for everything. “You’re deep in shit up to your elbows, you’re 2x over budget on the project, the product is supposed to ship in 3 months, you’re in the exact same position you were in before I got here, but now somehow it’s my fault.”
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