[HN Gopher] What good workplace politics looks like in practice
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What good workplace politics looks like in practice
Author : matheusml
Score : 275 points
Date : 2025-10-01 17:36 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (terriblesoftware.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (terriblesoftware.org)
| gm678 wrote:
| > Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and
| that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature
| and not by mere accident is without a state, is either above
| humanity, or below it; he is the 'Tribeless, lawless, hearthless
| one,' whom Homera denounces -- the outcast who is a lover of war;
| he may be compared to a bird which flies alone.
|
| Sure, Aristotle wasn't talking about corporations, but as the
| author says "you can refuse to participate, but that doesn't make
| it go away," you shouldn't be a bird which flies alone.
| amarant wrote:
| Tribeless suits me just fine.
|
| The whole reason I avoid politics is because it's not solution
| oriented. I don't get the feeling people discussing politics
| are trying to solve any problems, they're just fighting a
| tribal war, to have their tribe win over the other tribe(s).
|
| Tribe cohesion seems to be valued waay higher than end results,
| and I'm a results-oriented person, so politics just isn't an
| attractive passtime to me. I also detest fighting/bickering,
| and I think it's not entirely unfair to describe politics as a
| bickering contest.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You realize the article is about "politics" in the workplace
| or more accurately learning how to deal with people and
| getting your ideas across?
|
| Your comment doesn't address the article at all.
| jitl wrote:
| Did you read the article?
|
| > feeling people discussing politics are trying to solve any
| problems
|
| it's explicitly about how you need to work in political ways
| to solve problems at work. It's not about country-wide
| politics or something.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > Did you read the article?
|
| FWIW, the HN guidelines[1] specifically ask that we not do
| that.
|
| _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that"._
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| scarface_74 wrote:
| We can go by the guidelines or we can look at reality.
| It's blindingly obvious that he in fact did not read the
| article and based everything he said on the title
| amarant wrote:
| I actually was thinking specifically about the office
| politics at one of my previous employers when I wrote that
| comment.
|
| Yes it's also applicable to the other kind of politics. The
| two are entirely too similar imo.
|
| All the more reason to steer clear if you ask me.
| mlsu wrote:
| The counterpoint to this is that in order to motivate large
| groups of people to get stuff done, you need to be
| 'involved.' A good leader cannot be someone who says "we're
| above all of this" -- they have to be involved, they have to
| influence, and they use their influence to productive ends.
|
| You actually cannot be solution oriented _without_ politics.
| If you are "not involved in politics," that means that
| politics is involved with you, and you'll be forced to go
| wherever it lands, instead of attempting to influence the
| outcome.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It turns out in the end, we are solving problems _for real
| people,_ and so all the messiness of real people: the
| pettiness, the tribal nature, the bickering, the facts-
| bent-to-justify-feelings... That 's in the problem domain.
|
| (For software engineers in particular, who can trend
| towards wanting to think of themselves as little logic-
| machines divorced from that kind of behavior: I also think
| it's a good exercise to keep that stuff in-scope because we
| are _not_ immune to our own humanity, and recognizing when
| others are being tribal and petty makes it easier to
| recognize it in ourselves.)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The problem is way more "involved in what exactly?" than
| whether people should be involved or not.
|
| The GP is right that people tend to name stuff as
| "politics" when there is no external goal. And getting
| involved on those is just bad.
|
| But also, the GP is wrong if you go with the formal
| definition for that word, like you are doing.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Tribeless suits me just fine._
|
| Just because you're not a part of the prominent tribes that
| you see around you does not make you tribeless.
|
| -- [...] _and I have no culture of my own._
|
| -- _Yes you do. You're a culture of_ one. _Which is no less
| valid that a culture of one billion._
|
| -- Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 6, episode 16,
| _Birthright, Part I_
| suzdude wrote:
| > I don't get the feeling people discussing politics are
| trying to solve any problems
|
| It depends on what you view a "discussing politics". To
| borrow a quote, "politics is the art of the possible." You
| have to use politics to define what problems are even
| considered, much less the possible ways they might get
| solved.
|
| For instance, unlimited spending on political campaigns is
| either a problem, or not a problem, depending on your
| politics, never mind if it should be solved via amendment,
| court packing, or congressional act[1].
|
| I agree, many people go hardcore on tribalism. I would likely
| agree it is a bad thing that many Americans define politics
| as, "us" and, "them". If you want to be results oriented, you
| have to convince people it's a problem, you're going to need
| to use politics to do so.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| tribelessness itself is a poor result and does not solve any
| problems. It's a dead end. It's irrelevance. It's being an
| animal that eats for a while then dies and does no one else
| any good in the mean time. By arranging things so that no one
| else is a part of you, you are also not a part of anyone
| else. What is the point of that existense? It's the same as
| living in a vr where all you do is self-gratify and it has no
| effect on the world.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Sounds fun, I'm in. Didn't ask for the ride/responsibility
| and the only reason it hasn't ended by now is sheer
| cowardice
| bitwize wrote:
| You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic
| is interested in you.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Abandoning care about current politics gives me:
|
| - more focus of personal responsibility for my own actions, I
| do not belive that uknown electorate solve my problems
|
| - open mind for those, who have different political view, I no
| longer see enemies and it gives mindset to have less biased
| conversations on various topics
|
| - more time to education about alternative topics, creativity,
| building, care about family, etc.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Should be titled Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics?
|
| It's not a discussion of the toxic political environment we live
| in today.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| A good clickbait title though, I probably wouldn't have clicked
| otherwise...
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| My reward for clickbait is that I stop reading it
| exmadscientist wrote:
| It turns out that that the degree to which you can avoid
| politics is proportional to the number of _other_ people
| involved. You can probably safely ignore international
| politics: there are around 8 billion other people involved in
| it, and unless you are prepared to devote most of your time to
| it, you probably aren 't going to move any needles anywhere.
|
| Family politics, on the other hand, involves maybe a dozen
| people. Usually less. We don't even call it "family politics"
| even though it really kind of is. Family politics is
| _important_ and _you can not opt out_ unless you don 't want
| (this) family. Even disengagement is a form of active
| participation here!
|
| Somewhere in between, there is a line. The author says (and I
| agree) that workplace politics is on the "really you should be
| caring" side.
| riedel wrote:
| I would say, toxic politics is also just the bad politics the
| OP is talking about. Basically by the definition of the OP, I
| think pretty much most populism qualifies as bad politics.
| Politics beyond the workplace can work very similar to the one
| within. I know people who did 'good politics' within their work
| context and were asked to actual enter local politics. IMHO
| this is the best case. While I guess we also need career
| politicians, I see the biggest value in people that enter
| politics at a later stage.
| whstl wrote:
| To me, "populism" in the workplace shows up as pitting two
| groups against each other for personal gain.
|
| I've seen it way too many times, from the engineering side:
| isolating engineers so they don't see decisions, and then
| blaming them to external stakeholders when something fails.
| dang wrote:
| We put workplace politics in the title above, and also switched
| from the baity "Stop avoiding" to a more representative phrase
| from the article.
| suzdude wrote:
| > Now I think the opposite: politics isn't the problem; bad
| politics is. And pretending politics doesn't exist? That's how
| bad politics wins.
|
| Feels like that's how extremism wins? If no one wants to confront
| other's political ideas, out of fear irrational responses,
|
| At least in the United States, Americans are more unified on
| issues than the current executive branch, or (at the very least)
| the largest main stream media outlet would have you believe. It'd
| be great if people worked at the center, dealing with outcomes.
| There's far too much talking past each other, as people stand on
| their mountain of comfortable points, far too many who ignore
| evidence as soon as it does not conform to their world view.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the article...
| suzdude wrote:
| Are you saying it's not applicable? Or the examples don't
| work?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I am saying your reply about "politics" on the national
| level have nothing to do with "workplace politics".
| hollerith wrote:
| >the current executive branch . . . the largest main stream
| media outlet
|
| The OP is about _office_ politics.
| andy99 wrote:
| Everything has a sales component, good engineering doesn't
| automatically sell itself. In that respect, I agree some of
| what's called politics here is always necessary.
|
| On the other hand, I've worked at places where the only way to
| get ahead is to be a smarmy political operator and do no real
| work (I find this common when there is no exposure to a real
| market so no objective standard of what is the right direction to
| take). It's better to just leave such organizations.
| j2kun wrote:
| Politics is any question of the form "what should we do?"
|
| If you don't want to be involved in answering questions like
| that, then by all means avoid politics.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Both if you don't want to be involved in answering them and you
| can accept whatever answer other people come up with.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > Stop pretending you're above politics. You're not. Nobody is.
| The only question is whether you'll get good at it or keep losing
| to people who already are.
|
| False. You do not lose if you do not play. You can offer your
| expertise/opinions and point out places where things could be
| improved, but at the end of the day, just treat work as someone
| paying for your time. If you've advised them on how to best make
| use of that time, and they want to do something else, well it's
| their money.
| galenmarchetti wrote:
| it depends on whether you want to live life with work-as-
| someone-paying-for-your-time or whether you want to live life
| as work-as-perfecting-and-delivering-on-craft
|
| you can have an attitude towards spending the short hours you
| have on this earth attempting to produce quality work that
| others appreciate and make their lives easier in some way, as
| opposed to writing those hours off as sold to someone else
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And, indeed, perfection of the craft involves politics: it's
| not just understanding the technical space, it's about,
| eventually, understanding why other people see that space
| differently, what their goals are, how those goals overlap or
| don't, and how technical choices feed into that social layer.
|
| Back in the day, Chrome was about a sandboxed subprocess
| architecture that made for a more stable browser. It was
| _also_ about breaking the back of the Microsoft monopoly and
| advocating for why people should bother to care (remember the
| comic strip Google commissioned?). Nowadays, if it weren 't
| about politics at all, _Chrome would still be the best choice
| because it 's still technically very good._
|
| But there's more to the problem than simple technical
| competenece.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| You can hone your skills while still maintaining a healthy
| detachment. You make your case at a thing, business decides
| to do something else that you think is dumb. You only "lose"
| if you were overly attached to the decision in the first
| place. Otherwise you simply get a chance to observe the
| outcome, see what went well/poorly, and reflect on
| whether/how you were totally right all along. Next time you
| have a clearer understanding and perhaps will be able to
| better articulate your position. You didn't lose. You gained
| experience and wisdom. You always win as long as you're open
| to do so. The business lost by listening to the wrong person.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I've heard it called both "killing the unchosen
| alternative" or "Professional Subordination"
|
| https://www.manager-tools.com/forums/deceit-and-murdering-
| un...
|
| Amazon's LP is "Disagree and Commit"
| asmor wrote:
| If I need to dig into social engineering and extrovert
| masking to be an effective engineer I probably should also
| look for another job. I hate places where this borderline
| nepotism is the only way to get anything done.
|
| Oh well, I'll just endure it until the job market relaxes a
| little.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think this is saying the same thing as the author, with the
| possible exception that the author is operating under the
| assumption that curtailing one's career at a particular level
| is "losing." It isn't for everyone, and it's a perfectly
| rational decision to top out as a really good individual
| contributor or senior software engineer.
|
| ... but at some point in a corporate setting, the job becomes
| about people, not just technology, because _all_ businesses end
| up being about people. Deciding not to address that sends a
| _very_ heavy signal to anyone with authority to put a person in
| a position of high authority in a company that they don 't want
| that authority. You can't just-write-really-good-code your way
| towards being CTO or senior VP of anything; eventually, you'll
| meet the challenge of "Someone else has another idea to do it,
| and maybe it's worse than yours or maybe it's equivalently good
| but optimizes along other axes than yours, and if your answer
| to them asserting we should all use their solution is 'I don't
| do politics' then the company _will_ use the solution that was
| advocated for and better, worse, or indifferent, yours will be
| interpreted as under-supported and routed around. "
|
| > well it's their money.
|
| And, indeed, for those of us who don't do politics, it always
| _will_ be their money and not ours.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider
| a "senior engineer" as someone who dutifully just pulls
| tickets off the board and doesn't have to lead major
| initiatives that involve dealing with other people.
|
| If you are just pulling well defined tickets off the board,
| you are easily replaced, outsourced and it's hard to stand
| out when looking for another job.
|
| Then you shout "use your network"! That required being known,
| being liked and being remembered - politics.
| alarge wrote:
| I think the problem here is the implication of the term
| "politics". We've been conditioned (at least in the US) to think
| of politics as a tribalistic "us vs. them" activity where
| interactions have winners and losers.
|
| The classic picture of "office politics" is about either damaging
| reputations with gossip or getting special treatment because of
| _who_ you know instead of _what_ you know.
|
| But this depiction strikes me as less about that dirty version of
| politics and more about simply accepting that social grease is
| important in an organization. Teamwork is important. Crafting the
| message to the recipient is important. Inclusiveness and a shared
| sense of ownership is important. Culture is important.
|
| I detest and refuse to engage in tribalism - workplace or
| otherwise. But I 100% believe in the stuff from the previous
| paragraph.
| WCSTombs wrote:
| Yeah, this article says things like "understand the big
| picture" and "keep higher-ups informed about what's really
| important" and claims this is "good politics." No, that's
| probably just part of your job. Are there really people out
| there saying not to do these things? I'm left with the
| impression that the article is arguing against a straw man,
| because there is definitely something called _workplace
| politics_ that engineers (rightly) try to avoid, but it 's not
| what the article seems to be describing.
|
| The thing I call "politics" that engineers like to avoid is
| making technical decisions based on personal relationships,
| making _who_ does the work more important than _what_ is being
| done and how. As a low-level employee, you might have to deal
| with that to an extent, and thus you should develop the soft
| skills to navigate that environment. As a higher-level
| engineer, you should definitely try to eliminate it from any
| part of the organization that you have influence over. My worry
| with articles like this is that it spreads the mentality of
| "it's fine, you can make this work!" and then we're all worse
| off because we accept the status quo rather than improving the
| culture.
|
| To be clear, you can't completely eliminate politics from an
| engineering organization, since people will always take some
| mental shortcuts, but you absolutely can reduce it, and things
| will be much better if you do. Not only will your group make
| better decisions, but it will also be a more pleasant working
| environment for everyone.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got
| pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some
| overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone
| knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I
| bet if you dig into what happened, you'll find it wasn't because
| the decision-makers were stupid. It's because the people with the
| right information weren't in the room."
|
| Well, it's a decent article, but that paragraph does not match my
| experience. In my experience, it's typically because there's a
| non-technical reason why the technical decision was done badly:
|
| 1) devs, or their supervisors, or both want Hot New Thing on
| their resumes
|
| 2) in order to get Good New Thing purchased, the Old Bad Thing
| must be shown to be unworkable, so saving Old Bad Thing with a
| clever solution is undesirable
|
| 3) org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or
| others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword, whether
| it makes sense here or not
|
| None of these are reasons that I like, but they are also reasons
| that are very convincing to most people, especially high-ranking
| decision makers.
|
| I don't mean to suggest that the articles points like "Building
| relationships before you need them", etc. aren't a good idea.
| Just don't expect it to have a very high success rate in winning
| debates about "terrible technical decisions".
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Agreed. In my experience, a lot of this has been the XY
| problem. C level has a legitimate need or problem, they think
| they've solved it by asking for technology Z and the people who
| actually know the systems aren't consulted. When they do push
| back, it's seen as not following orders, so now we have to
| shoehorn in some dumb solution that doesn't fit in with the
| rest of the env. It works, so leadership doesn't understand why
| it's a problem.
| eawgewag wrote:
| I think the article is arguing that if you build the
| relationship, you can involve yourself into these conversations
| early enough to direct them the way that your idea would go. In
| your cases, for example:
|
| 1. Recognizing early enough that this Hot New Thing incentive
| is here and figuring out how your Good New Thing can live with
| the Hot New Thing
|
| 2. Helping show the Old Bad Thing is unworkable for your Good
| New Thing
|
| 3. Understanding that the org cares about New Buzzword and
| framing your work under those pretenses.
| some_guy_nobel wrote:
| What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?
| eawgewag wrote:
| I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of
| recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you
| to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But
| you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just
| need to recognize what you can benefit from.
| some_guy_nobel wrote:
| Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's
| thesis: "It's the loud person who's wrong getting their
| way because the quiet person who's right won't speak up."
| garciasn wrote:
| I think the article is great, in theory; it just NEVER works
| this way in practice, unless you may be in a technical
| organization. There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause
| technical projects to fail. We regularly see the articles
| about the failure rate of technical projects all the time on
| the front page.
|
| Why is this? Because the number and weight of the business
| folk almost always outnumber the technical. You can be the
| best fucking political engineering wrangler in the world;
| building relationships, taking people along for the ride,
| helping others gain understanding and those projects still
| fail.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical
| projects to fail
|
| So it's always business folks' fault, and never the nerds'
| fault? My experience has been different (full disclosure -
| professional nerd for 30 years)
| garciasn wrote:
| I appreciate you replying. My intent was never to place
| blame; instead, it was to point out that while the
| article's author suggests technical folks need to play
| the game better, I feel that it won't matter and getting
| the rest of a non-technical-first org along for the ride
| is more difficult than just being a solid political
| player.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| The article's point is that "the rest of a non-technical-
| first org along for the ride" is indeed playing politics
| (or at least a subset thereof).
| zanellato19 wrote:
| Never works in practice is such a strong statement and I
| would argue that most of the time is because the technical
| people avoid politics entirely, like the article says
| eawgewag wrote:
| I dunno, honestly, my organization works a lot like what
| the post is describing. I think my org has healthy politics
| but at the same time I can't really tell if the times I
| thought the politics were "toxic" were simply because I was
| on the outside looking in, whereas this time I'm an
| operator in the space.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Engineers are always insufferable with this stuff. I can
| think of dozen times where everything was perfect, except
| for <thing we didn't think of> or <thing we knew but didn't
| bother to engage the customer on>.
|
| There's a million reasons why projects fail, but astute
| engineering mangers who are able to understand what the
| business really needs are invaluable.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| As usual HN comments are more on point than the article.
|
| I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and
| rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the
| C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they
| played golf with someone outside the company.
|
| I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected
| and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green
| light and signed paperwork weeks before so we all were just
| wasting our time on something that had been decided
| unilaterally.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| The golfist outside the company played the political game
| better than the people inside the company.
| johnfn wrote:
| I feel that a lot of the times conversations around this
| topic end up with some anecdote like "well, playing politics
| doesn't actually work because I work at a dysfunctional
| company where decisions are made by morons". If you have a
| C-suite that makes decisions based on golf games, this advice
| is not for you. You have a different set of problems. You
| should absolutely address those problems. But that doesn't
| mean that this advice isn't for anyone, and coming and
| telling everyone that the advice is _always_ meaningless isn
| 't accurate.
|
| It's like two people discussing how to handle difficult
| conversations in a romantic relationship, and a third guy
| comes in and says "this conversation is irrelevant because
| every time I date someone they cheat on me". I'm sorry you're
| dealing with that problem, but it is not really related to
| the topic at hand.
| harperlee wrote:
| I'd add that in my experience, when you are close to the
| action, the cynic "golfing nepotism" take is usually
| missing a point of view that is far more rational; just far
| from the developer/architect that is dismissing the
| decision. Perhaps not technically optimal, or fair, or even
| legal - but even so, more akin to "I know this person
| delivered in the past, and the alternative is also good on
| paper" or "I really need to save my ass" (nobody got fired
| by choosing IBM) or "business-wise, this technical
| recommendation I don't really care for". Perhaps I'm
| optimistic but in general I don't really think (or want to
| believe) that people are quick to wage their careers on an
| acquaintance that is clearly selling something as part of
| their job, unless the stakes are really not so high from
| their point of view. Then again, open a newspaper :)
| rizzom5000 wrote:
| This is just one example that was made public due to the
| federal case, but there is no doubt that this kind of
| activity is quite common in corporate America at all
| levels. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-
| netflix-executiv...
|
| A solid understanding of behavioral psychology may make
| it obvious, but like you mention, one could also just
| open a newspaper.
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| Except this is an article on how to perform technical
| politics in large organizations. Functional, intelligent,
| non-nepotistic leadership is the _exception_ , not the
| rule. It has been this way for a long time, perhaps
| forever. Dilbert became one of the most circulated comics
| for good reason. This article is the third guy.
|
| Pretending that identifying stakeholders' needs,
| communicating the solutions, and delivering them are the
| keys to succeeding in corporate politics is a joke. It's
| our parent's telling us that we need to be good for Santa
| Claus. Human politics is an enormously deep subject, and a
| newbie will get trampled every single time. If you are
| sitting at a poker table and don't know who the sucker is
| within five minutes, congratulations, you are that sucker.
| johnfn wrote:
| > Functional, intelligent, non-nepotistic leadership is
| the exception
|
| The majority of marriages end in divorce. This doesn't
| mean that I should treat all prospective partners as
| someone I will eventually divorce. That is not healthy
| for me, the people I interact with, or my future.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Survivorship bias. Get burned a bunch of times and see
| where your strategy lies. You'd be a fool to keep sinking
| all your effort into things that devastate your life time
| and again.
| bluGill wrote:
| If the C-suite makes decisions "based on golf games" then
| you need to learn how to play golf. You don't have to be
| good, but don't be so bad that you slow up the game. It is
| okay to be 1-2 over par every hole, but you need to nearly
| always find your ball and not hit too far into the rough.
| Take some lessons if needed. (there are swings that don't
| have as much power but are a lot easier to be accurate -
| perfect for you who doesn't want you win, you just want to
| be good enough to play the game). Then make sure you are on
| the list of people who will "complete your four-some" when
| anyone is looking for someone to play.
|
| Nothing wrong with being good at golf above if you want to.
| However this is about politics and that just means good
| enough to play and talk about the game.
|
| edit: over par not under...
| wordpad wrote:
| Respecting and engaging with company politics in order to
| push good engineering decisions is one thing, but
| learning and playing a sport, I think falls outside of
| "other duties as assigned" for an engineer.
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| Sorry to nitpick, and I know what you mean, but 1-2 under
| par on each hole you would be shooting ~45-55 which would
| basically be the best in the world :)
|
| 1-2 over par is shooting 90-100 which is much more
| achievable :)
| bluGill wrote:
| Thanks, fixed that.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Also how do you get invited? When the invitee is
| specifically inviting the CEO without you to circumvent
| your influence?
|
| Who is going to do your job while you stroke egos?
|
| Victim blaming as usual. The problem is you don't do the
| CTO's job in addition to your own....f-off with that
| hustle life nonsense.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| if you're one or two strokes under par for every hole
| you'll be invited because you're a world class player, or
| more likely you don't want to get invited because who
| wants to play with people who suck that bad?
| matt_s wrote:
| > If you have a C-suite that makes decisions based on golf
| games, this advice is not for you. You have a different set
| of problems.
|
| Another way to look at it is that your role isn't in the
| decision making circle, even if you are on a project that
| is supposed to help make a decision. I was in this role
| evaluating vendors solutions, in hindsight I can see how I
| conflated the involvement in the evaluation process with
| the decision making, those aren't the same.
|
| Think of it like buying a car. You could be on the project
| to evaluate car companies, features, test drive them and
| document findings but just because you did all of that
| doesn't mean you're a decision maker and shouldn't have any
| emotional attachment to whatever the decision ends up
| being. Yes if they make a decision with bad trade-offs,
| like a car with a lot of issues, you may be dealing with
| those and it may suck but that's your role.
|
| I think part of politics around technical decisions is
| recognizing if your role has any attributes of being
| involved with the decision making or if your input is just
| one of many, potentially minor, inputs.
| le-mark wrote:
| > Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically
| because they played golf with someone outside the company.
|
| Every Oracle adoption for the past 40 years
| hopelite wrote:
| And 100% of TikTok and Paramount information control
| acquisitions.
| timr wrote:
| > As usual HN comments are more on point than the
| article....I've lost count of how many times something was
| proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the
| C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions
| basically because they played golf with someone outside the
| company.
|
| You're just naming legitimate stakeholders (the C-suite) and
| asserting that they're illegitimate.
|
| I grant you that playing golf is a cartoonishly pathological
| [1] version of it, but yes, there are always people more
| powerful than you in the organization, and if they have an
| opinion on what you should be doing, then you can either try
| to convince them (i.e. politics), or you can give up. Not
| playing is not an option, and being obstinate is a good way
| to get fired.
|
| So maybe a case of HN comments being "more on point than the
| article", but primarily in the way that it directly
| illustrates what the author is saying: engineers routinely
| bail out of the politics, to their own detriment.
|
| (FWIW, all of the items in the parent comment's list are even
| less extreme, and more reasonable, than your own. For
| example, if you throw up your hands in disgust simply because
| your colleagues want to use a new tool, you're gonna have a
| bad career.)
|
| [1] and likely apocryphal - there's probably something going
| on that is more rational, and characterizing it as "picking
| the golf buddy" is a cope.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| > So maybe a case of HN comments being "more on point than
| the article", but primarily in the way that it directly
| illustrates what the author is saying: engineers routinely
| bail out of the politics, to their own detriment.
|
| IDK about everyone else, but I pretty routinely bail out of
| the politics of decisions when it's mostly to the _company
| 's_ detriment. Starts to look like an uphill battle against
| people above me on the food chain? Sure man, go ahead, not
| my money you're wasting. The only politicking worth doing
| in those cases is making sure I'm outside the blast radius
| if it's something so bad it's gonna eventually blow up.
| Luckily big businesses move so slowly that this rarely
| takes less than a year, and often quite a bit more.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I would guess that most (?) decisions involving salespeople
| and the c-suite are relationship based. My entire industry
| runs more or less on personal relationships (construction).
| In my case, virtually all of the work I sell is to people
| that trust me to deliver because I have repeatedly done so in
| the past. Every time I get a new customer I aim to build a
| relationship and deliver the best possible product I can so I
| get more work in the future.
| artursapek wrote:
| the most common I've seen is "person in charge of Project That
| Makes No Sense is the most aggressive and willing to do
| deceitful things to make themselves look good"
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I as a self interested actor as we all are see nothing wrong
| with:
|
| 1) Since around 2008 I've had 8 jobs after staying at my second
| job for nine years. Whether I was laid off or chose to get
| another job because of salary compression and inversion, being
| able to get a job quickly - and it's never taken me more than a
| month even in 2023 and last year - was partially because at now
| 51, I have made damn sure I stay up to date with real world use
| of the "latest hotness".
|
| 2) see #1
|
| 3) if you are a VC backed company, your shining light is not
| "make a good product". It's "the exit" and shortly afterwards a
| blog post about "our amazing journey" where they announce the
| product is going to be shut down.
|
| The goal of politics in the office is not to do "the right
| thing". It's to stay in alignment with the people who control
| your paycheck and to make sure you can keep exchanging money
| for labor when time comes to her another job.
| xpe wrote:
| Yes, recognizing reality and the incentive structure is
| powerful. Then one can make smart tradeoffs. Most people want
| to stay in apparent alignment with their employer to advance.
| But sometimes perfect alignment isn't optimal for what you
| want to do next.
|
| Some examples:
|
| Some might want to work on an interesting project with a new
| technology, even though it isn't a recognized fit for your
| company.
|
| Some prefer to build strong and trusted relationships for
| referrals later.
|
| Some people will pursue aims that are to the detriment of
| their company. *
|
| It is wise to recognize the diversity of goals in people
| around you.
|
| * Getting great alignment is not easy. Not with people, not
| with highly capable intelligent agents trained with gradient
| descent that will probably operate outside their training
| distribution. Next time you think a powerful AI agent will do
| everything in your interests, ask yourself if your employee
| will do everything you want, just as you would want it.
| brk wrote:
| This guy businesses.
|
| Big decisions are almost always made on factors that are more
| relationship based than technical based at the end of the
| day.
|
| Many highly technical people despise management, MBAs, and
| anything in that orbit. This is understandable, but leads to
| a lot of frustration.
|
| If you truly want to guide major decisions you are going to
| be more effective at the top of the stack than the bottom.
| Every tier has trade offs, and you are almost always having
| to sell some part of your soul to truly move up.
|
| Like it or not, most technical companies these days are
| managed to short terms goals and payouts. The C Suite,
| investors, etc are all just there for a payday. The actual
| product or anything else is just a detail in the goal of
| collecting commas. If you recognize this, you have a better
| chance of managing your own expectations at whatever level
| you are in the org. If you spend your time fighting for
| something that is not truly the goal of the company you will
| tend to have a bad time overall.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Regarding #1, when people ask what is the best skill I
| acquired during my career, I always answer that it was
| "learning how to do well in interviews".
|
| For a very long time it was the only thing I focused. Quite
| often the job itself is pretty easy, getting in is the hard
| part.
|
| In the past couple of years I let it slide a bit because
| keeping yourself sharp for interviews is sort of a pain in
| the ass, but I promised nyself that 2026 I'm back at it
| JustExAWS wrote:
| It depends on what type of interviews you expect. My value
| proposition hasn't been my ability to write code for over a
| decade. It was first being the first or second technical
| hire by a then new director/manager/CTO brought in to lead
| a new initiative as a lead/architect and then working in
| customer facing cloud consulting roles combined with hands
| on keyboard coding.
|
| With those roles, it's all about soft skill behavioral
| interviews and system design. I can do those in my sleep. I
| just keep a career document of all of my major projects and
| describe them in STAR format so I can review them when
| needed.
| MountDoom wrote:
| > "terrible technical decisions".
|
| Another point worth bringing up is that sometimes, that stuff
| doesn't matter. I see so many engineers get hopelessly invested
| in technical debates that are, honestly, just silly: it's often
| better for the company to get something barely-good-enough done
| quickly than to flesh out the "optimal" design over the course
| of weeks or months, and over the dead bodies of people who have
| a different opinion about vi-versus-emacs.
|
| And even if you accumulate tech debt, it is sometimes a wise
| decision to pay it back later, when you (hopefully) have more
| money and time.
|
| So, I'd add "pick your battles wisely" to the list of tips.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There's also option 4: CxO was out golfing with some rich
| friends that happen to own <vendor of buzzword software> and/or
| is getting kickbacks, so now we have to use <crap buzzword
| software> instead of <old solution> or just not using it at all
| because what the software offers isn't needed, but CxO doesn't
| know because he's out golfing, banging hookers and snorting
| coke all freaking day.
|
| And yes, this kind of shit happens regularly - sometimes,
| people even get busted for it like that Netflix executive who
| got kickbacks from, amongst others, Netskope [1].
|
| Let's be real: no matter how good you are at networking -
| unless you come from Old Money or have a wildly successful exit
| under your belt, you are not joining the club of elite morons
| that actually pulls the strings.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-
| executiv...
| wat10000 wrote:
| And even if it was because the right people weren't in the
| room, that's still a leadership failure. Part of the job of
| those decision-makers is to _get_ the right people into the
| room
|
| With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics.
| Everything this article describes as "good politics" is
| definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should _feel_ like
| politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building
| relationships? That's just meeting interesting coworkers.
| Understanding the real incentives? That's keeping the big
| picture in mind, a standard requirement for any engineer.
| Managing up effectively? A good manager will treat you like the
| expert that you are and that happens automatically. Creating
| win-win situations? That's that big picture thing again. Being
| visible? Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done?
|
| I hate politics. I do all of those "good politics" things and I
| enjoy all of it. It might technically be "politics" but it's
| not what we think of when we say the word.
|
| This article boils down to a semantic argument. They want to
| carve out a section of the job and put it under the label of
| "politics" when most of us would not put it there. That label
| may be right, it may be wrong, but I don't really care. It's
| just not an interesting argument. I think this article would be
| a lot better if it dropped the P word entirely and just
| explained why and how you should do the "good" things it lists.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I
| hate politics" engineer [...] Who doesn't like to share the
| cool stuff they've done?
|
| Certainly many would prefer to just enter flow state and work
| on their craft, work the wood with the chisel (=do the
| engineering work), etc. It is of course not a good strategy
| in reality, and it doesn't matter what people "want", but
| let's at least admit that plenty of people don't enjoy having
| to interact a lot. People-oriented vs thing-oriented.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I know that plenty of people don't like doing presentations
| and writeups and such, but just telling your coworkers
| about whatever cool thing you've done seems to be pretty
| much universally enjoyed in my experience.
| roarcher wrote:
| > org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or
| others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword,
| whether it makes sense here or not
|
| Oh lord, I have seen some nonsense built because some
| prospective investor wanted to see us "do something with AI"
| lest we be "left behind" somehow.
| pelagicdev wrote:
| While I agree that avoiding/ignoring politics isn't helpful to
| anyone, it still doesn't have a place at work. My view is, people
| _are going to disagree_ on politics, and therefore it just gets
| into a debate, or worse, an agrument at the office or in chat and
| makes the whole situation more ugly than the manager and /or
| employer wants to have to deal with.
| stego-tech wrote:
| This, this, this, but with a few caveats I've learned for myself
| (both government politics and corporate politics):
|
| * Politics in a derogatory sense is simply bad governance. It's
| bad ideas leading to bad decisions, often supported by bad data
| or bad justifications. In government, that "bad" might be a shade
| of "-ism" (corporatism, fascism, authoritarianism, racism,
| sexism, etc), while in corporate realms it's often either
| straight dicta from the executive team or manipulative
| malfeasance from bad actors further down the chain
|
| * Good politics and good governance are indistinguishable from
| one another, by and large.
|
| * If consensus is reached by those acting in the best interests
| of the organization in the long haul, everyone involved should
| feel fairly invigorated afterwards. That rush is what gets folks
| _into_ politics more broadly, and is how movements grow
|
| * Cooperation, historically, breeds more success than mere
| competition. Bad actors wielding politics as a cudgel generally
| try to deter others from participating because they desire
| competition as a means of preventing others from achieving
| success.
|
| * Politics isn't necessarily deceitful, as the OP gets into. It's
| about building relationships and understanding goals, then acting
| collaboratively to achieve them.
|
| * "Politics-free zones" only serve to enable the bad actors in a
| space, who use that label to advance their (often indefensible)
| ideals and clamp down on dissent.
|
| A lot of us in tech need to do better with politics if we want
| technology to change the world for the better, instead of merely
| serve the whims of billionaire griftos or regimes hostile to
| human rights.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| > 5. Being visible. If you do great work but nobody knows about
| it, did it really happen? Share your wins, present at all-hands,
| write those design docs that everyone will reference later.
|
| And don't forget that when managers or seniors are involved,
| there's magic alchemy that comes from spreading the credit
| around. Suppose Bob works under Alice and Bob, mostly solely,
| accomplishes something significant. If Alice presents and takes
| credit for it, Alice might receive 1 credit point. If she
| presents it as Bob's work and never mentions herself, Bob will
| get the 1 credit point. But _Alice_ will pick up some credit
| _just for presenting_ (let 's guess 0.5 unit), Bob will get the 1
| point, _and_ because Alice now manages Bob, whose stature just
| went up, she 'll get an additional (let's guess) 0.25 point. So
| you've got 1.75 units of credit instead! _Never be shy to give
| credit to others._ You will benefit too!
|
| (This is also one of the 11 Laws of Showrunning:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867023 among other links )
| fusslo wrote:
| anecdote:
|
| My first company got bought out and the CEO went around
| awarding bonuses. It was a calculus of around ( 0.4 * salary *
| number of years ).
|
| When it was my turn, he double-checked with HR that I had
| worked there as long as I had
|
| I was super jr, but sat next to his office. Didn't know I
| existed.
|
| Thanks for the link and perspective
| silvestrov wrote:
| This is one effect that a lot of narcissists don't understand:
| You get more by giving some away.
|
| So you can get only get to the top when you spread coins
| around.
| Loughla wrote:
| With the number of narcissists I've seen be wildly
| successful, I have to disagree with you.
|
| There is a very clear and well established path to the top
| for people who only care about themselves.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| That's cool theory and all but in reality alice will get all
| the credit and no one will even remember bobs name. People are
| mostly wrapped up in their own thing and 2 months later at best
| they will remember one sentence and that it's somehow attached
| to alice. Get people doing the work on your team to present it
| _if_ you want them to get credit or stop pretending you
| actually care about this
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| I've always used "we" when describing and presenting work done
| as part of a team, even if solo. There's a certain skill in
| knowing when to promote yourself, and how you do so. These days
| I tend to be positive in a group sense, and take direct
| specific ownership of failings. I may be lucky but I think this
| has led to a lot of respect from coworkers and c-suite that
| I've engaged with. I've never once felt like people don't know
| who is getting the work done in the end.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Everywhere I've worked, come annual review time, everyone is
| supposed to emphasize what _they_ did, not what the team did.
| "We're considering promoting _you_ , not the team, so tell us
| what _you_ did! " Same with interviews: You're not supposed
| to say "I was a key contributor of Team X that shipped
| Product Y." You're supposed to say "I shipped Product Y."
|
| So you have this weird contradiction where you're expected to
| work as part of a team, but then measured on your own
| contributions in a vacuum. So if you take credit for the
| team's effort, you're the bad guy who gets rewarded, but if
| you admit it was a team effort and take credit only for your
| contributions, you're forgotten for not having enough impact.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| In these situations I will frame my contributions directly
| without the "we" part, speaking to how I contributed to a
| particular team output, or if it was 100%, I'll just say as
| much. My comment was in terms of general talk to
| stakeholders / presentations / casual conversations - then
| I default to "we".
|
| E.g. if I add some new feature to a tool and deploy it,
| I'll say "we've just pushed X...". If I do 99% of some
| particular feature, I'll still say "we've added Y...". In
| an annual review I can still speak to what I specifically
| did. I have probably been lucky in the teams and team sizes
| I've been in, but I've not had a problem with this.
|
| For context I've mainly stuck to small (<50) and medium
| (<500) companies. My one experience (due to acquisition) of
| directly working within a 5000+ company was certainly
| starting to feel like what you described, I got out.
| alphazard wrote:
| This is not a great take. Politics shows up as a failure to
| construct an aligned organization. There will always be some
| politics, but it should not be the most significant thing going
| on at a company. In a well designed org, it tends towards zero.
|
| In a positive sum environment, with incentives aligned with the
| shareholders, everyone is trying to make the business more
| profitable, and the "more" that everyone wants comes from the
| market. You have to contend with reality on reality's terms to
| get more.
|
| In a zero-sum environment (which is most large corporations)
| nothing anyone does will meaningfully move the needle on
| profitability. The business has been built, and now it is
| coasting. How to divide up the predictable profits is decided by
| politics, the "more" comes from someone else within the
| organization getting less.
|
| The best advice is to know which environment you are in. The
| "right" move is entirely context dependent. If you are in a zero-
| sum environment, you need to play politics, that's the game. If
| you are in a positive-sum environment, politics will be the
| noise, you can get more by building more.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I think you are missing the game theory aspect of it. Even in
| the positive sum game the spoils aren't divided equally.
| Additionally not everyone behaves rationally, i find the
| opposite to be generally true
| alphazard wrote:
| > I think you are missing the game theory aspect of it.
|
| That's actually exactly how I think about this, let me
| explain my analysis.
|
| I view it as the composition of two games. "Should we pursue
| the spoils?" is the first game, and the correct strategy is
| to play that game and coordinate with people to play it.
|
| The zero sum game is dividing the spoils, this is conditioned
| on having won the first game. As long as everyone is
| guaranteed enough of the spoils ahead of time for the game to
| be positive EV, they will play it, and continue playing games
| like it.
|
| When you apply this to a company, this is just an issue of
| mechanism design (inverse game theory). Why weren't you
| architecting the game that the employees play, such that
| there is relatively little to be gained from the zero sum
| game, and most of the value comes from the magnitude of
| contribution to the positive sum game?
|
| Ideally people play a positive sum game with their coworkers
| that is tied to revenue and their contributions to it, to the
| tune of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars a year, while the
| zero sum game is only worth 1000s of dollars a year.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| I really don't see how your reply made a new point. What
| the other person was responding to was that even if you
| were to construct your positive sum game, you will have
| politics because reward _distributions_ are not equal. The
| very fact that some people receive bigger bonuses, RSUs or
| promotions and others don 't is an unequal distribution
| such that politics will be there.
|
| Say everyone is compensated with equity. The goal is to
| increase share value. Yes every action that each employee
| takes in theory is going to be toward that goal because
| that's how they're incentivized through the compensation.
| But in reality you do a performance review and you have to
| decide how _much_ some person contributed to the overall
| result, which isn 't possible to objectively determine. And
| in that space of perception and subjectivity is were
| politics, or as I call it social arbitrage opportunity,
| exists.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Unfortunately most corporate politics is dominated by those who
| do it professionally
| brightball wrote:
| This is an excellent read and the title definitely made me assume
| the author wasn't talking about "office politics".
|
| What's more important than "politics" is your ability to
| communicate in terms that people making decisions will
| understand. I didn't get this nuance early in my career. I was
| always focused on shipping, oblivious to costs: Time Cost,
| Opportunity Cost, etc.
|
| Learning to make technical decisions based on Return on
| Investment is the real key to bridging this communications
| divide.
|
| Weighted Shorted Job First (WSJF) is an approach that will bring
| your team and organization into thinking that way. It works
| wonders for getting people on the same page and it's just an ROI
| formula.
|
| WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Size
|
| Job Size is a proxy for cost, because it's a proxy for
| time...which costs money.
|
| Cost of Delay is a fancy way of estimating how valuable something
| is. Technically it's "User Business Value + Time Criticality +
| Opportunity Enablement & Risk Reduction" but it really boils down
| to Value + Time Criticality. Time Criticality meaning real
| deadlines where the value will go away if we don't hit it by the
| deadline. Think conference dates or contractual obligations, not
| sprint commitments (wanting something sooner doesn't make it time
| critical).
|
| The more prepared you are, the better the case you can make for
| this number while those who are unprepared will simply have to
| guess without anything to substantiate it.
|
| I got deep into this philosophy after watching an exec waste
| resources for over a year and a half on a project that nobody
| wanted. When we started scrutinizing decisions with WSJF and
| nothing he wanted to ranked highly enough based on the math, the
| entire organization got better. It does wonders to eliminate the
| squeaky wheel problem too.
| languagehacker wrote:
| When Jeff Hodges gave a presentation of his "Notes on Distributed
| Systems for Youngbloods"[1] at Lookout Mobile Security back in
| like 2014 or 2015, he did this really interesting aside at the
| end that changed my perception of my job, and it was basically
| this. You don't get to avoid "politics" in software, because
| building is collaborative, and all collaboration is political.
| You'll only hurt yourself by avoiding leveling up in soft skills.
|
| No matter how correct or elegant your code is or how good your
| idea is, if you haven't built the relationships or put
| consideration into the broader social dynamic, you're much less
| likely to succeed.
|
| [1] https://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-
| distrib...
| dfjfklei wrote:
| When has employment politics ever meant "leveling up in soft
| skills"?
|
| Employment politics has always meant: brown nosing, throwing
| vulnerable people under the bus, posturing, taking credit for
| other people's contributions, blaming other people for your
| failures, and on and on.
|
| Or to use the language of TFA, "iNfLUeNcE".
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| And what, you think those are technical skills?
| dfjfklei wrote:
| My point is that framing "bad politics" as a problem with
| you, or your employees if you're an employer, is absurd.
|
| "Bad politics" comes straight from the top.
| hchdifnfbgbf wrote:
| If that's all you see, you probably need to level up your
| soft skills.
|
| Certainly the things you're talking about are real, and
| particularly severe in some environments, but there's a lot
| of room to improve your influence without engaging in any of
| that.
| dfjfklei wrote:
| You have yet to meet someone at a company you work for you
| who does one or more of the things I listed above to
| successfully advance their career?
| rkomorn wrote:
| I don't think that's their point.
|
| I think their point is that you can have influence
| without doing these things.
| dfjfklei wrote:
| Then I was misunderstood as well.
|
| As if anyone, myself included, would suggest that my
| listed items are the only way to influence your employer
| is a hilariously bad faith read.
|
| I take issue with TFA framing the problem of people
| saying they hate "employment politics" as a _you_ problem
| when I am of the opinion it is a leadership problem. Bad
| leaders fail to, or refuse to, see the things I listed as
| "bad politics".
|
| Just take my supplements, bro. It'll fix your "soft
| skills", bro.
| rkomorn wrote:
| I think you were misunderstood as well, yes.
| hchdifnfbgbf wrote:
| Many do. More common the further up the ladder you get.
| But I've been able to gain enough influence to affect
| most of the things I care about without engaging in that,
| unless you consider being friendly and supportive
| (something that did not come remotely naturally to me) to
| be brown-nosing.
|
| If you want to significantly influence a lot of high-
| level strategic decision-making at very large companies,
| then you do probably need to engage in nasty things like
| that. But most of us don't work at that scope.
| rkomorn wrote:
| > If that's all you see, you probably need to level up your
| soft skills.
|
| Not OP but I honestly don't see how this comment/tone is
| warranted in response to what they wrote.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This is frankly a very childish and Reddit-level take on the
| issue.
| dfjfklei wrote:
| If you think HN is a bastion of "adultish takes", you're
| gonna have a bad time.
| rkomorn wrote:
| I agree with your description of "politics" as a
| negative/pejorative thing. That's also the only way I'm used
| to hearing it.
|
| Hearing about "politics" in a neutral/positive way would be
| new to me.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I agree with your description of "politics" as a
| negative/pejorative thing.
|
| That's just a difference in framing between winners and
| losers.
|
| If you get your way, you say it was due to influence,
| bridge building, teamwork, etc.
|
| If you don't, you say "politics".
|
| For every occasion someone says "politics" negatively,
| realize the other party is using the other framing.
|
| More importantly: For every time you get your way, the
| other party is saying "Politics!"
| rkomorn wrote:
| I think that's a very valid take, actually.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The way I see it is: "Office politics" means getting work
| done, making business decisions, and/or advancing your
| career _using means other than_ technical or domain
| expertise. It could have a good or bad outcome, but it 's
| still politics. The key attribute is that the outcome is
| achieved through some other method besides actually doing
| or directing the work.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > "Office politics" means getting work done, making
| business decisions, and/or advancing your career using
| means other than technical or domain expertise.
|
| s/other than/in addition to/
|
| That's the fundamental disagreement in this thread.
| bartread wrote:
| I used to work for a software company that literally had "no
| politics" as part of its DNA. It was in the company handbook,
| it was in our values, people would say it when they talked
| about what it was like to work at the company. Hell, whilst I
| can't recall any specific instances, I guarantee that _I_ said
| it and probably many times[0].
|
| But, of course, it was never true. It might have felt true -
| certainly superficially - when we were a smaller company, but
| the reality is that it _never_ was. We just didn 't want to be
| grown up enough to admit that.
|
| You can only really interface effectively with reality and make
| good decisions when you face up to that reality rather than
| living in denial. Or, as one of my favourite quotes (albeit
| that it's now a bit overused), from Miyamoto Musashi, puts it:
| "Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you
| must bend to its power or live a lie."
|
| So that company maintained the "no politics" value for long
| years after it became apparent to anyone with a working brain
| that it wasn't true. Wasn't even close to true.
|
| And that's poison: it bleeds into everything. Avoidance of the
| truth promotes avoidance elsewhere. Lack of openness, lack of
| accountability, perverse mythologies, bitterness, resentment,
| and a sort of gently corrosive low grade mendacity that eats
| away at everything. And all because we're lying to ourselves
| about "no politics".
|
| So I agree: politics is unavoidable and, if we are to succeed,
| we must do so by becoming politicians, and admitting to both
| ourselves and to others that we're doing it, because success
| cannot be sustained without that, and we also can't help others
| to reach their full potential unless we are honest with
| ourselves and eachother.
|
| _[0] And certainly I 'd say that I hated politics and wanted
| no part of it._
| hobs wrote:
| I think the problem is that this is the core of most
| companies. A core lie that they tell the employees and
| sometimes even the customers - "we value you" - "we care
| about our employees" "we want to serve our shareholders" "we
| build community" "we try to ..." vision statement type stuff,
| almost always suborned to "I want the C suite to make the
| most money possible RIGHT NOW" or "You can never make me look
| bad even when I am an idiot".
|
| Anything that violates those core precepts are rejected out
| of hand, and often times for things that would support the
| companies stated principles.
|
| I have worked 20+ jobs in my life, and either petty bullshit
| or greed rules the top of the heap in all but the most
| particular circumstances. I cant even remember how many
| meetings I have setup with CEO's to hand feed them
| information and cheer them on like a toddler so they can make
| the obviously correct decision.
| Nition wrote:
| Your Musashi quote reminds me of another relatively well-
| known quote from philosopher Eugene Gendlin:
|
| "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it
| worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And
| because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
| Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand
| what is true, for they are already enduring it."
| invisibleink wrote:
| All life is politics, and workspaces are not politics exempt. The
| world we live in understandably makes many cynics. Yes, still we
| want no kings, and more politics in and out of our workspaces.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| On some level this is just a technicality. When people talk about
| politics they almost always talk about bad politics because good
| politics doesn't feel like politics. It just feels like things
| are working correctly.
| WCSTombs wrote:
| It is a technicality, but an important one IMO, because using
| bad terminology causes unnecessary confusion. I would
| definitely say that most of what the article describes as "good
| politics" is not politics at all, but more like just the soft
| skills part of a normal engineering job.
| Congeec wrote:
| There is a saying "People are politics. How can you avoid
| people?".
| handsclean wrote:
| The author presents two options: think you're above politics, or
| practice it. I admit that, when I was younger, I did believe the
| first for a while, but what it progressed to was an option C:
| accept that politics, in some form, is necessary and affects me,
| then choose to spend as much of my life as possible on other
| things. If politics is necessary then boy is farming necessary,
| yet I'm not a farmer. Medicine is necessary, yet I'm not a
| doctor; defense is necessary, yet I'm not a soldier. These jobs
| are entrusted to others. We live in a highly specialized society,
| with which comes the gift of being free to choose beautiful
| things to feed our limited life energy to, and the curse of being
| ineffectual in any area we sacrifice little for. Because we'll be
| consistently outperformed by those who give more to that area,
| and less to every other endeavor and principle.
|
| Sometimes, in both workplaces and countries, we enter a state in
| which we're forced to feed more of ourselves to the beast. The
| state's name is desperation. It's a tragic state, like reversion
| to a society in which we spend all our time finding food. People
| in such a state can't create science or art.
| ionwake wrote:
| I disagree with the OP.
|
| This is my rebuttal about the nuance of being an employee.
|
| An engineer avoids "politics" - as a vital protection mechanism
| against getting himself fired.
|
| Often autistic ( my case ), technical, hard working, constantly
| exposed to poor decisions, lies, manipulations. The one thing the
| engineer can hold sacred is the technical truth. It is his one
| true avatar. To align himself with that, but not SPEAK FOR IT. To
| let his actions , the code, the technical implementation speak
| for him. IF a poor technical decision was pushed by higher ups,
| then accept it and implement. After all that is why there are 3
| layers of management between him and the leadership who came up
| or approved the idea without him. The engineer stands for his
| work and his agreed role. The fruits of the companys efforts and
| failings become apparent through that. Why would a lowly paid
| engineer put his neck on the line to disagree with management and
| potentially embarrass someone? or worse?
|
| It's as if the blog post and people who agree with it held
| positions, that relied on scheming, and "alighnment" to survive.
|
| I think many good points are made, however Ive always felt that
| for the same reasons I stayed out of "office politics" I would
| also struggle to hire my own team which could handle working
| together for the greater good of the company. The only solution I
| thought of was some sort of "fair" share dispensation.
|
| tl:dr; OPs opinion "could sound" in parts, like upper management
| blaming the code monkey for not being aggressive enough in the
| board meeting, where about 4 tiers of middle management stood in
| there with him, secretly 2 are having an affair in the toilets, 1
| is someones nephew who doesnt work, another is terrified of being
| replaced by his underlings, none know anything about the project
| specs, ready to PIP him for speaking up and making them look
| slightly incompetent, or perhaps wondering outloud why a poor
| decision was being floated which was clearly some machination
| involving the powers that be to co-exist with other nebulous
| contracts and corporate entities. A terrible decision that would
| cost the company millions in the long term, but which would
| enable the current c-suite to look good before departing to other
| roles ala yahoo. If Ive offended some upper manager, Im sorry.
| hobs wrote:
| There's no way to avoid politics to avoid getting fired, it
| just means that when you get laid off you picked the wrong
| thing, and basically did it incidentally because you refused to
| forecast what project was going to be culled. Most software
| projects fail, and working harder on a failure won't get you
| anywhere.
|
| If you find the personal part difficult then what I recommend
| folks dodo is pay attention to the flows of money, time, and
| communication that happen. Most of the time analyzing the
| patterns of how work is accomplished will tell you just as much
| about who is going to come out on top in a new paradigm as
| anything else.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And you get absolutely nowhere besides being a mid level
| developer if you avoid office politics. I don't care what your
| title is, if you are just heads down pulling tickets off the
| board, you are a mid level developer according to every
| leveling guideline I've seen by companies that have one -
| including BigTech.
|
| After that it's about "scope" and "impact". You can't have
| either without managing up, down and horizontally.
| fsckboy wrote:
| 1 office politics tip for engineers: engineers are helpful
| people, people who believe in putting in hard work now because
| future benefits.
|
| office politicians believe in focusing on politics
| (relationships) and putting their name on as much progress as
| possible and getting facetime with higher ups.
|
| watch for it in meetings: do not accept work assigned to you by a
| peer, push back on the boss going along with a peer assigning you
| work, and do not accept a peer volunteering to do the
| presentation while you get started on grunt work. that person is
| planning to "coordinate" your work and put s/he's name on it and
| give the presentation to higher ups.
|
| you do the presentation, you talk to higher ups. somebody wants
| to help? they need to take their share of the grunt work, earn
| their way in like you did.
| some_guy_nobel wrote:
| "Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got
| pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some
| overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone
| knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I
| bet if you dig into what happened, you'll find it wasn't because
| the decision-makers were stupid. It's because the people with the
| right information weren't in the room."
|
| This stands in stark contrast to the genai, ai-first nature of
| every company today.
|
| In fact, almost every point made in this article is completely
| wrong from my experience in FAANG. It's almost always, 'my way or
| the highway' from leadership. Jump aboard or get left behind.
|
| "The alternative to good politics isn't no politics. It's bad
| politics winning by default. It's the loud person who's wrong
| getting their way because the quiet person who's right won't
| speak up. It's good projects dying because nobody advocated for
| them."
|
| - again, genai - Amazon RTO - Meta's metaverse forray. - etc.
| mumbisChungo wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| You might think the people doing politics are manipulative ladder
| climbers, but they're climbing the same ladders available to you,
| so you should be one too.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Not that I _disagree_ with the article, but I wish the title was
| clarified to _office_ politics.
|
| I clicked hoping to find am argument to the engineering community
| at large to recognize the political aspects of our work.
|
| Although I guess the basic argument still applies.
| instagib wrote:
| Website and original unedited title: Stop Avoiding Politics
| csours wrote:
| Book Recommendation: High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE_MEu7xn8Y
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982128569
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Share your wins, present at all-hands
|
| Please don't. I'm sick of watching your Power Points.
|
| > But they're not willing to do what it takes to influence those
| decisions.
|
| This is true, and it remains true for me after reading your
| article.
|
| I 100% agree that your approach is an effective way to move your
| organization forward, but one teeny weeny detail you're omitting
| is that if you continue to do this you will no longer be an
| individual contributor and will instead be _management_. You will
| gradually cede all of your time to this cause of championing good
| ideas and will have no time left for doing any of the work
| yourself.
|
| I think most of the so-called cynics know the role of politics.
| It's not that they are ignorant, it's that they want their
| _management_ to take care of it.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| he's pushing for 'office politics' not national politics.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > It's because the people with the right information weren't in
| the room.
|
| You can often disprove this idea by just asking about the
| decision. The objections are often raised. That doesn't mean
| people take them seriously.
|
| People have all sorts of strange biases and irrationality.
| Magi604 wrote:
| "Politics is just how humans coordinate in groups. It's the
| invisible network of relationships, influence, and informal power
| that exists in every organization. You can refuse to participate,
| but that doesn't make it go away. It just means decisions get
| made without you."
|
| This is how I feel, and this is what I tell people when they
| don't want to get involved in the organization's politics.
| awkwabear wrote:
| This is what I always try to emphasize to the junior guys I've
| worked with. I read the book Flowers for Algernon when I was
| younger and it was the thing that stood out to me the most.
|
| It does not matter how right you are if no one likes or will
| listen to you. Unfortunately, being likeable is inifinitely more
| important than being right. Your job is to strike a balance
| between both otherwise stupid likeable people will be dictating
| the direction.
| dizlexic wrote:
| I find being outspoken is a great way to be heard and visible,
| but if I'm being honest my entire personality is confrontational.
|
| I share my opinions, accomplishments, and (most importantly) my
| failures. This tends to make me a default leader in
| conversations, and I try really hard not to be overbearing.
|
| ADHD + outspoken = confrontational / obnoxious.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Politics here is collaboration. Example given on tool selection
| seems like lacked good engineering and oversight in terms of
| trade studies or boards found in larger orgs.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Politics is just how humans coordinate in groups._
|
| "Politics" is _the word we use to refer to_ coordination
| mechanisms.
|
| > _Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got
| pushed through at your company._
|
| There were other interlinked concerns that were more important.
| "Yes that probably would be better, except that it's not
| consistent with what we've told the auditors. So it's not
| happening."
|
| .
|
| > _Stop Avoiding Politics_
|
| Not everyone needs to stick their oar in on every decision.
| paganel wrote:
| Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I remember that there
| used to be times when slop like this (and some other similar stop
| I've recently seen getting posted in here) was just not a thing,
| at least not at this level. I mean, this is really sloppy, it
| doesn't mean anything and a lot of things at the same time, it
| doesn't mention anything concrete.
|
| > Ideas don't speak. People do. And the people who understand how
| to navigate organizational dynamics, build relationships, and
| yes, play politics? Their ideas get heard.
| jahsome wrote:
| > Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and
| influence in the service of good outcomes.
|
| Yeah, no shit dude. That's exactly the part that's disgusting.
| Using the word "just" here feels dishonest.
|
| I was subjected early on to someone who viewed every single
| interaction in every single relationship as transactional and
| framed every decision around the question "what's in it for me?"
|
| It really warped my worldview for a long time and it took a ton
| of therapy and self-reflection to overcome. I'm not going to
| sacrifice my principles just to get something I want.
| fallinditch wrote:
| Beware of corporate cultures that encourage employee/teammate
| feedback and provide mechanisms for collecting it anonymously
| (often a function of HR software).
|
| Anonymous feedback is almost always destructive, the exception
| being when the leaders of large organizations seek employee
| sentiment.
| wavemode wrote:
| The HN title "what good workplace politics looks like in
| practice" is less clear than the article's actual title (and, the
| article's actual point), "Stop avoiding politics"
|
| This isn't an article about improving organizations, this is an
| article about getting what you want within an organization by
| getting better at playing politics.
| 6510 wrote:
| If you are doing one thing (politics) you are not doing
| something else.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > I bet if you dig into what happened, you'll find it wasn't
| because the decision-makers were stupid. It's because the people
| with the right information weren't in the room.
|
| Or, the people with the decision making power just had a
| different opinion made a decision irrespective of "right
| information"
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't think this is "politics" but even if it technically is,
| the term has such negative connotations that I think we're better
| off approaching the scenarios from a different angle, rather than
| trying to rescue "politics". Start by telling yourself "I will
| assume the best in motivations and most charitable
| interpretation." Now approach the "Why?" like a cultural
| anthropologist: How did we get here? What clues can I find that
| explain the current state? What artifacts are out there? How is
| communication organized? What's the hierarchy structure? Who or
| what are notable influences? Talk to lots of people. Ask lots of
| open questions. Listen. Sketch literal and conceptual diagrams of
| "how this all works".
|
| It's likely to turn out everyone is NOT an idiot and there are
| very logical & understandable reasons for why things are the way
| they are. Or not, in which case you can run away secure that
| you've made the right conclusion.
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