This story leaves me with a completely different takeaway message than the author got.
It seems like he got involved in situation he didn't understand and may have risked his job (and perhaps the jobs of others) in the process. His process demo'd better, but he has no idea why some people were opposed to it.
What if this was a product that emphasized security, and he inadvertently violated the security model to get speedups? Understand the processes you're working on, and the problems that your co-workers are dealing with. In this case, he could have made his life easier by identifying the "faction" that wanted what he wanted and working with them.
"Understand the processes you're working on, and the problems that your co-workers are dealing with."
Go further than that. Step back and look at the environment as a whole. It helps to spend time understanding a situation before assuming you have appropriate ideas about changing it (ref. below).
In my opinion I think the author did try to address the big picture. He brought it to his boss, and his boss's boss. If ideas are commodities worth trading then why was the market closed from the top down? This is a lesson in corporate culture which I think the author explains quite well.
> In my opinion I think the author did try to address the big picture.
Sure. But grandparent's point is that he did it backwards: first he made the changes he wanted to see, and then he demoed it up the chain and got himself in hot water. Had he first taken time to develop a thorough understanding of the situation and the environment in which it had origin, he'd have been able accurately to evaluate how best to take action in order to bring about his desired result -- or indeed whether it might instead be best, despite what had originally seemed to him a desperate need for improvement, simply to cultivate the detachment necessary to take no action at all.
Then someone would have been able to explain objectively why his solution was less good. It wouldn't have been this wishy washy political struggle that only hurts the department and technology.
I'd prefer to lose a job that was caught up in such a scuffle. (Of course, I say that in times when a job can be got).
It seems like he got involved in situation he didn't understand and may have risked his job (and perhaps the jobs of others) in the process. His process demo'd better, but he has no idea why some people were opposed to it.
What if this was a product that emphasized security, and he inadvertently violated the security model to get speedups? Understand the processes you're working on, and the problems that your co-workers are dealing with. In this case, he could have made his life easier by identifying the "faction" that wanted what he wanted and working with them.