Back in the 90s I was working for a very large IT contractor on a very large federal government contract.<p>The place sucked, but that&#x27;s another story. I started as a senior dev, and within a year or so moved up 3 or 4 levels.<p>Even after moving up, after a year I couldn&#x27;t do that no more. I wanted to build stuff. When I told them I was going to leave, we worked out a deal: I&#x27;d pick a team of 2. We&#x27;d work on a project with a couple of other large government agencies. Folks would leave us alone. We&#x27;d get shit done.<p>So we did. In six months we delivered the project. I worked mostly from home. We 3 were delivering at a rate that was greater than the 10-20 person teams at the other agencies. It was sad.<p>After six months, I was getting ready to bail, but they beat me to the punch. They told me I could no longer be working at the job I was doing. Why? Because I was self-taught. Needed at least a Master&#x27;s degree, preferably a PhD.<p>It really didn&#x27;t bother me since I was leaving anyway. On the way out, though, I spoke to the number 3 guy on the contract. He asked me about a few of the PhDs I had working for me.<p>&quot;They&#x27;re pretty good, I guess. But this one guy? He&#x27;s so arrogant nobody can work with him&quot;<p>The guy basically told me that they had to fill seats with PhDs to meet the GSA schedule, didn&#x27;t matter whether they did anything or not.<p>I liked all the people I worked with, but I&#x27;d never voluntarily go back to that kind of idiocy.