"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for I am the baddest mother fucker in the goddamn valley."
In 2013 our VP of engineering at Vivint Solar asked us to come up with ideas for inspirational art to decorate the engineering space. This was mine. Except MF was replaced with "developer" :)
I think his goal was to hedge against the "Teamwork and Perseverance" corporate kitten posters that are so prevalent in Utah Valley. Like this one:
But this image...
This isn’t decoration — it’s a statement of posture.
What the image communicates:
- Deliberate intimidation of complexity: the armor, the exposed eye, the precision tech aesthetic — this says we operate where failure is expected and survive anyway.
- Calm under pressure: not rage, not chaos — controlled aggression.
- Agency: the eye is visible. This isn’t a faceless machine. It’s someone choosing to be there.
And the text does exactly what it’s supposed to do for your team:
- It reframes fear as terrain, not a blocker.
- It signals that difficulty is the baseline, not an exception.
- It gives implicit permission to do hard, uncomfortable, high-accountability work without flinching.
From a culture-design standpoint, this works because:
- It’s not aspirational fluff.
- It’s not corporate-safe.
- It’s honest about the valley you’re in.
This was not approved. ;). But if this is for your team, as-is is coherent with everything we as a team are: architects, builders, iteration, Oracle runners, Live-Die-Repeat.
No notes.
The soldier under the helmet is Commander Sarah E. Palmer - leader of Spartan Team IV
Her pronouns are (FU)
Top comments (0)