Believing You Ruined Your Employer's Business

After three years at my first job, several decades ago, I confidently believed I was useful. In particular, I had developed a reputation for disentangling knotty problems. But mid-way through my 4th year, I began to worry that I was actually hurting my employer. My company ran a heavily modified version of a proprietary system 1 that we licensed from IBM. My team's job was to maintain the local…