A long time ago, my then-scrum master pitched an idea to us: ID badges with little microphones. The microphones wouldn’t record anything, but they’d constantly monitor the ambient noise to see if we were having the kind of excited, buzzy conversations that signaled innovation. Once we had them, we could tune our days to maximize innovation.

I was brand new at the company but I told him that everyone was trying to catch lightning in a bottle, but nobody was willing to build a fucking battery. Then I told him the day we adopted that policy, I’d hand in my resignation. It never came up again.

Motherfuckers will try anything and they always have.