Communications! Don't stomp on other people to get to the top, instead get them to boost you up! Example: Make the changes to see if it works, but instead of showing it to your or his boss, you tell the one who wrote it that, "hey I got an idea on how to make this 100x faster". Only when he/she says your idea will not work, you say "actually I did test it, see". And you might get valuable information like for example the political status.