To circle back: I’ve pulled this off and am now on another team. It’s mixed blessings: I’m now in a highly visible role as an eng lead on a huuuge project and it’s stressful, but I can prove myself valuable and will do so. I really like my new management team, up a couple of levels, and this is a great change.
It’s really disappointing I had to switch. I loved the other project and the eng work was fun and challenging, the new stuff is old tech and not so much fun. I’ll be 60 next month and I’ll do this less fun stuff but I really feel I could have driven the new stuff somewhere. Shit. 