Am I obligated to work with the business side?

No. Not now, not later, not implicitly.

Attend every session for a year, take everything you learn to a competitor of ours, and we’ll count that as the thing working. We’re not building a talent pipeline we own. There are plenty of ways to pay our bills, and the ones we want are engagements where we’re genuinely the best fit — not the ones we cornered.

If you feel like you owe us something, we’ve built this wrong.