A lot in life is like a Wookie (Robert's Rule #25)

A lot in life is like a Wookie: hard to understand, very hairy, and can rip off your arms and beat you to death with them. (Robert's Rule #25)

Summertime for me is generally a very busy time. It's during this time that into the work/life mix are thrown not only the daily work/life challenges like how to make sure the laundry gets done and the bathrooms get cleaned but also additional things like children being on summer break and the resulting coordination of child care and the planning, scheduling, and taking of a summer holiday (not to mention trips to see family et cetera that really are 'holidays'), and when you travel with infants or toddlers such trips are whole projects in themselves.

Of course that's just the time that work activities seriously ramp up before we head into a release moratorium for the holidays as projects that were originally estimated to take 30 developer days are crammed into 5, and, the reasoning goes, since each 30 day project is crammed into 5 days, we can do 6 such projects. Thus, as the pressure from work mounts and you attempt to maintain work/life balance, you will undoubtedly come into conflict with those above you in the corporate chain and you will likely lose.

"That's life", they say, or "at the end of the day, that's what you have to deal with" as if a cliché will somehow make it more palatable or at least easier to endure. Here's the difficulty: as engineers and scientists, we expect, at least subconsciously, that life is somewhat orderly and something of a meritocracy where people compete like ideas and the best advance according to their abilities, just as ideas advance according to how well they are proven using scientific methods. To further add insult, we're taught as children in America that this is, in some degree, the reality as we celebrate those who work hard (either at sport or academics).

While there are those who recognize the failings of our educational system (in that it reinforces idea that our democratic republic is on some level a meritocracy), there are those who refuse to believe that we can be what we want to be and do (for the most part) what we want to do. There are those who recognize that even if we sincerely want to rescue the princess and make a daring escape while being pursued by the dark lord, we cannot - not even figuratively. Thus, the honest answer, as you've no doubt learned by now, is that the idea that our society or even our employer is a meritocracy is not even close to true. Those above you most likely are not there because they deserve it more than you, they are there because they played it more than you.

So, in your career, in this little game of whispers and thrones, learn who the Wookies are and let the Wookie win (First Corollary to Robert's Rule #25), because while no one worries about upsetting droids (scientists and engineers), in the words of the immortal Han Solo, "that's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose".