Five years in corporate | Ramblin' & Amblin' | Nov 3, 2026
Ramblin' & Amblin' Field Notes with Mike Hall (Staff Software Engineer)
Recorded on the move: engineering observations, systems architecture, and software craftsmanship reflections.
• Series Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNtb969T2-l0
• The Sound Above Curriculum: https://www.just3ws.com/series/the-sound-above/
• Canonical Profile: https://www.just3ws.com
Spoken Overview:
"when I'm talking to smaller shops than OMF, places like that, and they look at that five years I spent there and they think, and I've had this question asked, it's like, I think when your career is less than a decade, you think..."
Recorded: November 3, 2026
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
when I'm talking to smaller shops than OMF, places like
that, and they look at that five years I spent there and
they think, and I've had this question asked, it's like, I
think when your career is less than a decade, you think
that five years means anything, it really doesn't. Oh, another beautiful mushroom, that one got, a little got. Oh, do you think you can work in a less structured
environment? Tell me you've never worked in an enterprise before and had
any kind of meaningful contribution without telling me you
've never worked in a large enterprise and made meaningful
contributions.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Nobody told me to create GeekFest at OMF. I did that, and at the time, the management was like, oh,
cool, they knew how, what I was able to do. But as that management was eventually driven out and
replaced with the new, supple, pliable, narrative-friendly
management, who were not part of creating the system, the
people that they replaced were. They didn't see the value in it because they didn't see the
value in it because they don't have an imagination.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And the hierarchy is there to be obeyed, not to be ever
questioned or any independent, either it's their idea and
everything you're doing is to make them look good. Now, if you think, oh, Mike, you're just grousing. No, no, no, no, no, no. Go read the book, Catch-22.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
What is it? Major Butter, whatever his name was. Captain Butter. I can't remember his name.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And his monologue entry about feathers in his cap versus
black eyes and how he has to always worry about what the
people in, you know, the HQ, his superiors, thought. And whether or not something that happened by one of his
men was a black eye or a feather in his cap. And he's sitting there doing this kind of calculus, you
know, okay, so-and-so did this and that is, that's a
feather in my cap. That looks good.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
But this other thing didn't work out so good. That's a black eye. And so he's trying to calculate black eyes and there's
ratio of black eyes to feathers in his cap and whether that
's a favorable. And then he's got his lieutenants that he puts in place who
are the most supple, succulent sycophants that are possible
because, well, they alleviate his anxiety and make him feel
better about himself.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And that's all that matters because at the end, what is the
price? Oh, my God, I'm trying to blank on the name. Or was the brilliant one, I forget the other, the
protagonist's name, but he's getting out after he's finally
being released. The only way that they're going to sign his release is if
he acts like he likes them, you know, smile, joke with him.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Boy, do I feel that. Not that everybody's like that, but when you're in a large
enterprise and the iron rule of bureaucracy does ultimately
set in, that's exactly what it's like. Not even funny. It's like, it is exactly that.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And probably, you know, this is dangerous for me to say,
you know, would I ever work in a corporate environment
again? At this point, I don't even know if I'm ever going to have
a job again. So what, what am I going to do? Being nice and playing the game didn't really do much for
me out here on the outside.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
But, yeah, saying five years in a corporate, I am not in a
corporate office. Maybe that should tell you something about me. But unfortunately, you're only going to get the wrong
lessons because you're going to think that I was ejected
for doing a bad job. Or not, you know, whatever.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
When doing a good job had nothing, nothing to do with
whether or not I stayed there or not. It was whether or not I made leaders feel like they were,
or people that were in charge feel safe and good about
themselves. Or if I broke narrative by saying, things are broken, guys,
and we've got to fix this, otherwise it's going to cause
severe problems. It already is.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Here's all the risks that we're facing. And realizing finally in the end that all I did was just
make people who didn't want to have to work, work. The people that weren't busy helping me were busy up with
those guys, making them feel good about themselves. And they're there and I'm not.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
So, GeekFest at AllMath was not done because I was some
person who needed structure and guidance to execute and
improve and lead people in a positive way in an environment
where leading in a positive way was not valued or really
wanted. Because, listen, I always would complain about management
who, as they drove people out and replaced them with their
chosen people, why are we keeping each other isolated? We have a very limited knowledge on how the system works
and we've got teams that are all working inside the same
code base. Let's get them together and let's have coordination.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
What I didn't realize is that that wasn't the goal. The goal was to have as many teams as possible who all had
a need for more budget, more headcount, and that they
needed to hire more to build up their little fiefdoms. And make, put more feathers in their caps. And that fixing the problems under the current constraints
meant the leadership, oh, look how efficient you are.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
We're not going to give you anything more. Because when all that matters is the quarterly EBITDA or
whatever it was that they measured, cost cutting is
everything. As if firing a bunch of people somehow makes a bunch of
money available. You know, if I just stop paying my bills, all of a sudden
it looks like I have a lot of money.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
You know? It's, it's, it's this lie that capitalism just fucking
loves. And, um, the Open Telemetry Initiative, um, and my panor
amic view efforts, which are a culmination of my own
creativity and problem solving capabilities and leadership,
technical leadership. were valued in that I would see people in my mural boards
who wouldn't talk to me.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
So what these brilliant people didn't realize is that in
confluence and mural,
when you own a board at least, or a page, you can see who's
in it. And while they never contributed, I would see pairs of SVP
and his favorite people in meetings I was not invited to. I wasn't even informed of. But then I would just see their names appear inside of the
mural board.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And I'd wait to see if anybody says anything to me. And they didn't. But what that told me, though, is the work I was doing was
incredibly valuable because they were reading it and they
were trying to figure it out. But God forbid they ever actually talk to me because that
would fuck up their narrative.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
That would mean that they're not the ones who are going off
the leadership. So what I realized is that collaboration gets used against
you. And this is, you know, one of the reasons I particularly
despise people like Altman and Musk and Amadei is that they
are,
and Zuckerberg is, they will use other people's work
against them and present it as if it's their own. And all I need to do is look at all of AI and the LLM
training nonsense.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And literally just the words that they say, I don't even
need to reach for anything. You just Google horrible things these so-and-so said. And it's going to be a long list. But it boils down to they got theirs and they're going to
pull up the ladder and they're going to make sure that they
close off the garden
and that you are on the outside and they are the only ones
on the inside.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Same thing. And I used to say it's a microcosm, microcosm. And people who didn't want to hear it would get mad at me. So I had, on the other end, I had people that should be
collaborating with me, like fellow labor.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And even mentioning any kind of collective or bringing in
any kind of help from the outside was shot down hard. So we had zero bargaining, zero control of our effort, and
zero say in who gets to stay and who gets to go. They've done a very good job of brainwashing people and
making them scared. And I had people threaten me for even suggesting the idea
of any kind of collective anything.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Threaten. And those same people are also the same ones who I got to
see me, see their hands on me as the one underneath the bus
. So if you say to me, Mike, you spent five years in the
corporate world. Are you going to, how are you with structure?
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Oh, oh, sweet child. I don't care what your title is right now. You have no idea what you're saying. You have no idea what it's really like out there.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And if you think that it is guidance and structure, you're
thinking like in your small to mid-sized business where
either you do or you don't. There is no try. There's either you succeed or you fail. And you are going to feel the consequences of a decision,
good or bad.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
But in those places where there's so many layers of
bureaucracy and so many people counting their black eyes
and feathers in their cap, that's all they see. And anybody that's even indirectly pointing out that they
've got a whole lot more black eyes, what it recently
departed, Patrick Stewart's famous line, there are four
candles. While he's being tortured, what it was in 1984, room 101,
two plus two equals four. And it isn't that you say that it's five.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
It's that you truly believe it. And you know that it is five because Golderock or Big
Brother said it is. No, no, no, I've also had people tell me I'm a legend. I'm an absolute legend.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
They didn't do a whole heck of a lot to you. I don't know what they told anybody else. They told me I was. So do I do I need structure?
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Do I need corporate oversight? That's kind of a funny question because it's actually
missing the entire point of what I do and what I'm capable
of and what I have done. In the face, it wasn't structure, wasn't support. Structure wasn't support.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
When we talk about bureaucracy, you know, we want to cut
bureaucracy. You know, there's people that absolutely want more
bureaucracy because it's safe. And it makes it so that way you can find a T that wasn't
crossed or an I that wasn't dotted. Or somebody said something and their tone was off because
they've been just tripping to the brink over and over again
.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Gas lit over and over again. And they get just wound into a circle. At least that's what I did. And I got angrier and angrier.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
So, no, I don't need to have supervision. But I do know how to work with people. And I do know how to get people moving in the right
direction. All I need to know is that you value what I'm doing.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And if you don't value it, you've got to tell me what you
do value. And as long as we can come to terms and you're focused on a
good outcome, I can work with you. I can work with anybody. As long as you want to work.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
But I don't know. Maybe I'll never get another job again. Maybe I'll publish this and this one video will go viral. And they'll be like, oh, the biggest whiny crybaby in the
world.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Thanks, you're so special. Look at all these other people. They've done all this amazing stuff that we all know their
name. And just because you don't know my name doesn't mean I didn
't do something that mattered.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
It's just invisible. I've been buried. I've said to my wife and to other people that I wasn't laid
off. Because they finally were able to bury the thing that I had
done, redistribute it to other people.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And there was enough time and enough change of headcounts
that nobody remembered anything. And I know this because I've been trained on the material
that I wrote. I know this because the person who trained me on my own
material did not know that I was the sole creator of that
material. But it had happened two, three years prior at that point.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And it had traded so many hands in their space that they
were just getting people to use this map that I had built. And that's why I know that panoramic view is incredibly
valuable and the framework that I have around that. And it's also what I told my wife and friends is that, you
know, they can take this. Because I also know that a certain person in leadership,
when I briefed them, and I mean high-level leadership,
wanted to package it up and sell it as a proposal to get
budget to work on something for Palantir.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Not for Palantir, per se, but, you know, some project that
was going to be a Palantir-based project. And there was a multi-million dollar value put on the check
that they could get signed for it. But I knew that they didn't understand what I really did,
because it's a process. It's a way of thinking.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
It's a way of approaching a system that is ambiguous and
building a harness into it. And it embraces the reality of the system. It's about taking away any ambiguity. So do I know it's valuable?
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Yes. Did I do this under anybody's guidance or mandate? No. No.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
This is me. It was all me. 100%. No ambiguity.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And I had to fight for it. And I had many people who didn't understand it in the
beginning. And they didn't want to do it. But I had to push for it independently.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
I worked on my own. I worked independently. Then I had people in years' time train up on it. I had somebody take an early person who did see the value
in it.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Helped visualize the map. So I want to say that that was a major. I'm going to just put that caveat when I see single-hand
edly. But I built the data that they could build some screens off
of.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And that visualization was just a visualization of the map
that I had laid out
with the assets that I had already gathered. But even that person I tried to work with. And it was like, it was just a one-off thing for them. And they didn't really need it for the other work that they
were being assigned to.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
So they kind of forgot about it. I was really the only one that was pushing it. But too many people, too many separate times. Too many people in there who were studying it.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And I saw them. And then I was ejected. Why? Because I was inconvenient.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And I was making my point a little bit too well. And it was just showing how many black eyes they really had
. But they were so busy putting feathers in their own cap. And they really just wanted people that would just only see
feathers.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
And I was like, no. No, your face is all jacked up. You need to take this seriously. But they didn't need to.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Because ultimately, this comes down to the leadership doesn
't value it. They only see the money they're making now. And as long as they're making money now, tomorrow doesn't
matter. How it's today doesn't matter as long as they're going to
get their check.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Anyway. Rambling. This is a rough day. Alright, thanks.
Mike Hall
Host, Ramblin' & Amblin'
▶ Speaking
Bye.