Your boss's hours are real. That they're what got him promoted is the part you guessed.

Built on a whiteboard. Watch it.

Jeff was the guy you call when something breaks. He stopped answering his phone, stopped accepting same-day meetings, and told his boss he was declining a $20,000 project so he could put the hours into a multi-million-dollar proposal. He started in March. He was a director of engineering that August.

You look one or two levels up the org chart and you see the 10pm Slack, the weekend work, the calendar with no white space left in it. Then you draw a conclusion, and it sends you one of two ways. Either you start paying a price nobody ever asked you for, or you quietly stop wanting the job.

Same misread, opposite casualties.

In this episode: the two columns drawn out on the whiteboard, the two ways engineering leaders misread the org chart and what each misread costs, both of Jeff's boundary rules, and why a company that genuinely rewards heroic hours still isn't proof that overwork works.

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Zach White is the founder of Oasis of Courage. Engineering degrees from Purdue and Michigan, former engineering leader at Whirlpool, 300+ engineering leaders coached since 2019. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your life to reach your potential at work.