For awhile, I was working at NASA on an open source project. I had idealized NASA based on movies, and thought it was the kind of place where one could be bold with coming up with novel solutions to hard problems. I was naïve enough to think that if I had good solutions I could ignore the bureaucracy. I was extremely productive and often speaking up and contributing confidently in meetings. I ruffled feathers, and thought it was fine as long as my work was good. Around a year in, a middle manager started to micromanage who I was allowed to communicate with. I recall a point when I asked a superior, who had a cubicle next to mine, and who I had a positive relationship with up to that point, how his weekend was. He didn't respond and later that day the manager called me into the office and reprimanded me literally to the point of tears, for "going outside the chain of command". Eventually, despite being the most productive member of our open source team, in terms of open issues resolved, new features shipped, and tech debt paid off, I got fired for "low performance".
The lesson I took away is that I shouldn't work for bureaucratic organizations like NASA.