rino gaetano's a mano a mano

I'm drowning in Slack threads and standups, you know

They're filling my inbox and crushing my soul so

The quarterly goals that were due yesterday

Are stacking like emails that won't go away

And bit by bit I'm dissolving in dread

Of synergy metrics that live in my head

Of when I could work without jargon and spin

When bandwidth meant time and not meetings caving in

And bit by bit you're a ghost in this place

And all of our pivots just vanish without trace

Of when you were real and not just a Slack thread

Not some corporate fiction we're all living in dread

But give me your hand and let's circle back near

Maybe we'll find some alignment right here

That even the synergy can't freeze or erode

Maybe we'll leverage this burnout we know

And bit by bit you will see in the haze

That something authentic survives all the daze

The same kind of feeling you used to ignite

Before all the standups consumed every night

That cruelly the meetings had stolen away

Returns like a roadmap that leads us to stay