The glass door didn’t actually creak, but in the silence of the 15th floor, the sound of my own confidence felt like a structural failure. I was holding a tablet, the screen glowing with a 95-slide deck that I believed would change everything for the legacy systems at the firm. I had been told, during my orientation 45 days prior, that this was a ‘boundary-less’ organization. ‘Anyone can talk to anyone,’ the HR lead had said, her voice dripping with a saccharine lack of irony. So, there I was, standing in front of the Big Boss, pitching a radical decentralization of our data storage. He smiled. It was that tight, practiced smile you see on people who are about to tell you that while they appreciate your passion, you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the physics of the room. Two hours later, my direct manager-a man who claimed to hate ‘middle management’-called me into a side room. He didn’t yell. He just looked disappointed, as if I’d worn muddy boots onto a white carpet. ‘You didn’t check the pulse first, Leo,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a way we do things here.’