> Influence doesn’t have to be manipulative

> influence is a euphemism for manipulation

Surely you can see that your statements contradict each other.

> Influence for influence sake is selfishly motivated.

Hard disagree. It certainly can be, but doesn’t have to be. A person can be a positive influence for no other reason than they feel like it’s a good thing to do. You could influence your coworkers to be better engineers and not gain anything from it.

I mean, we could retreat to the “oh you feel good about it, so it’s still selfish” stance, but that’s uninteresting.