Also make sure to brag using terms that non-technical people can understand and want to hear. Less "we stopped writing an in-house CRUD that was Django but worse" and more "we saved months and increased security by adopting a market leading solution and it works better with AI too".

While probably facetious, those with power (who you aim to smear and replace) will save themselves and work together to fire you ASAP. This is not a winnable battle nor strategy for success, unfortunately.

This 100%. I once got disciplined for insubordination for skip-leveling my "manager" and disregarding their instructions when she started telling people on the team to work on something totally non-critical, when the team had a demo in a few days that wasn't ready yet, with a client that was already unhappy, on an 8 million dollar contract.

I didn't hang around that place long.

Did they know something you didn't know, about that demo/client? i.e. misaligned incentives?

The opposite, they were 12 hours timeshifted and out of the loop managing a side hustle while I was interacting with the client daily.

If I can only go back in time to 2007 :)

See also, test the flammability of every bridge you cross.