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Don't avoid workplace politics

• firesteelrain 1y ago
  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.
• gm678 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    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.
    • jitl 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        > 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        • scarface_74 1y ago
          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
      • deleted 1y ago
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      • amarant 1y ago
        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.
    • scarface_74 1y ago
      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.
    • mlsu 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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 1y ago
        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.
      • the_other 1y ago
        If you're not involving people in the problem solving, you're probably solving the wrong problem.
    • teddyh 1y ago
      > 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 1y ago
      > 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
    • Brian_K_White 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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
        • Brian_K_White 1y ago
          Why did you come here to express the opinion that that sounds good?
          • deleted 1y ago
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          • bravetraveler 1y ago
            The church door was open, that simple. Many conversions lately?
            • Brian_K_White 1y ago
              I walk by countless open doors. I only enter the ones that I have some interest in. This door contains other people, who you claim to have no interest in.
              • deleted 1y ago
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              • bravetraveler 1y ago
    • wat10000 1y ago
      Politics and discussing politics are pretty much unrelated things. Actual politics is 100% solution oriented. It's about getting other people to do what you want to achieve the outcome you want. Disagreements are about which outcomes are desired, or which actions will best achieve them. Discussing politics is, at best, about saying what you wish other people would do.
  • bitwize 1y ago
    You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you.
  • t0bia_s 1y ago
    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.
  • dotgov 1y ago
    There is a word in German: "vogelfrei". It means "free as a bird". Sounds romantic, but what it actually means is that the person who is free as a bird does not enjoy the protections of the law and hence there are no repercussions for killing them.
• daft_pink 1y ago
  Should be titled Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics? It’s not a discussion of the toxic political environment we live in today.
  • SCUSKU 1y ago
    A good clickbait title though, I probably wouldn't have clicked otherwise...
    • lanfeust6 1y ago
      My reward for clickbait is that I stop reading it
  • exmadscientist 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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.
    • 1y ago
• suzdude 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    This has nothing to do with the article…
    • suzdude 1y ago
      Are you saying it's not applicable? Or the examples don't work?
      • scarface_74 1y ago
        I am saying your reply about “politics” on the national level have nothing to do with “workplace politics”.
  • hollerith 1y ago
    >the current executive branch . . . the largest main stream media outlet The OP is about office politics.
• andy99 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    Both if you don't want to be involved in answering them and you can accept whatever answer other people come up with.
• ndriscoll 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
      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.
• alarge 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
• deleted 1y ago
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• rossdavidh 1y ago
  "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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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.
• pelagicdev 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  > 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27867023 among other links )
  • silvestrov 1y ago
    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.
    • deleted 1y ago
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    • Loughla 1y ago
      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.
      • mlrtime 1y ago
        How are you defining successful?
        • Loughla 1y ago
• alphazard 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      > 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.
• deleted 1y ago
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• nextworddev 1y ago
  Unfortunately most corporate politics is dominated by those who do it professionally
• brightball 1y ago
  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.
  • anonymars 1y ago
    > What's more important than "politics" is your ability to communicate in terms that people making decisions will understand. Not to disagree with you overall, but I would argue that very much is politics! In other words, how do you influence "the system"? How do you sway people to your point of view, how do you get them to follow your ideas and plans? You need your interests to be their interests, and that involves speaking their language. Some people you might persuade because they too think your idea is the right one, some you might persuade by trading favors, some you might persuade by convincing them it's the most cost-effective, etc. as described here.
• languagehacker 1y ago
  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-distributed-systems-for-young-bloods/ https://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distrib...
  • dfjfklei 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      And what, you think those are technical skills?
      • dfjfklei 1y ago
        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 1y ago
      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.
• invisibleink 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  There is a saying "People are politics. How can you avoid people?".
• handsclean 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
• deleted 1y ago
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• fsckboy 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  "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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    Website and original unedited title: Stop Avoiding Politics
• csours 1y ago
  Book Recommendation: High Conflict by Amanda Ripley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE_MEu7xn8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE_MEu7xn8Y https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982128569 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982128569
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• MetaWhirledPeas 1y ago
  > 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.
• deleted 1y ago
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• ineedaj0b 1y ago
  he’s pushing for ‘office politics’ not national politics.
• nitwit005 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
  "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 1y ago
  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.
  • sublinear 1y ago
    Being right about most things more often than everyone else is an inherently likeable quality. It's not really about being "likeable", but being persuasive. Don't put the cart before the horse. You're correct that being right isn't enough, but if you make being likeable a direct goal you will come off as insincere and fail.
• dizlexic 1y ago
  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.
• tbrownaw 1y ago
  > 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.
• catchcatchcatch 1y ago
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• paganel 1y ago
  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.
  • supriyo-biswas 1y ago
    Phrased alternatively: The people proposing an idea matter more than the idea itself, which implies that one should participate in relationship building (which is a part of the “politics” mentioned by this article).
• jahsome 1y ago
  > 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.
  • writebetterc 1y ago
    "good outcomes" doesn't have to be the best outcome for you, personally.
    • jahsome 1y ago
      There's no part of me that wants to maintain relationships for the express purpose of extracting value in the future for gain -- personal or otherwise. I simply refuse to let the end justify the means, whatever that end is.
  • acureau 1y ago
    This is what I took away from the post too. I'm not going to invite someone out for a coffee so I can use them down the road. I feel the same way about "networking". The people around you are not tools. I want no part in "it's not what you know" kinds of situations. I'm paid for what I know. The author seems to think being apolitical means not giving your input or making decisions. If I'm not allowed to do that without sucking up to the higher-ups, I'll find another job. Everyone I respect is above politics.
• fallinditch 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    If you are doing one thing (politics) you are not doing something else.
• socalgal2 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
  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.
• deleted 1y ago
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• Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  "The Rules for Rulers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" (2022, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith) https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1541701364 https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po... Both publications cover the politics of most firms with stakeholders. =3
• raincom 1y ago
  As long as more than two people (3+) are involved, it is politics.
• yieldcrv 1y ago
  nah, I don't care about my employer's suboptimal decisions enough, I'll just collect a paycheck and if let go I just close that laptop and wait for the shipping instructions. let them careen off a cliff, the cash in your bank account matters. we get paid enough not to care. just buy LEAPs on VOO or a hot sector's ETF, its literally that easy. in my experience this take has gotten me promoted, sometimes I take it. cash cash cash.
• thenoblesunfish 1y ago
  Great essay. And it's true about all politics. Power will always rest somewhere. You want it to rest with people who know what they're doing, and who care about other people, and are very uncomfortable about the idea of power for its own sake.
• alastairr 1y ago
  I think this article misses the point. I don't think many engineers are averse to collaborating, advocating for their work and using soft skills. Politics also entails lots of complex human relationships - favoritism, rivalries, jealousy, egomania etc. these play out in different ways in different orga depending on how people and teams are incentivised and arranged. But the net result for the engineer trying to navigate this is can be a lot of wasted energy and frustration. Not always of course, and some orgs really don't have as much of a problem. I suspect it's more common in larger orgs with a traditional corporate culture.
• wolvesechoes 1y ago
  Reading some comments here on the one hand makes me feel safe, because seems like a lot of tech people do not understand what power is and why it matters, so someone that does can feel little bit more secure. One the other hand makes me pessimistic, because it confirms what I thought for a long time - nothing will happen to improve those important, society-wide topics (FOSS, privacy, personal computing), because... tech people do not understand what power is and why it matters.
• zkmon 1y ago
  It's a very common situation at work - if two team members have serious difference of opinion, the manager, instead of looking into the matter or taking sides, asks both to duel it out and come out with an agreed solution. Manager doesn't care about who is right and not willing to take the risk of judging. Easier for manager to is just let them fight it out. In reality, the manager already has a perception for both and knows the outcome. The team is aware of that perception, and would not dare to correct it or give a surprise because that is not going to benefit them. Bosses don't like their hard-earned perceptions being corrected. No surprises please. The weaker would realize this perceptional power and bow out even if their view point has merit. Manager would thank both for sorting it out. You can't engage in gladiator fights against bad and powerful people. You are more likely to hurt yourself than influencing the decisions. The audience may clap and encourage the fight, but they are not completely neutral. Each person gains their power by perception (from their boss or co-workers). They can use this power to shut you off. So, from an individual perspective, you need to choose what's best for you based on how powerful you are. Simply getting into politics without such assessment is foolish. The whole point of collaboration is to build the perceptional power. Also, being in higher position keeps you in loop for all communication giving you more access to the on-goings and opportunity to get visibility. This increases the perceptional power. People hoard information. It's a treasure and sometimes their whole career depends on keeping it as secret. Also people hoard work items. Just having a long queue of work also gives power. Atleast you have a lot to talk about and possibly grow your team.
• Yizahi 1y ago
  The real advice should be formulated like this - avoid office politic at all costs if you tend to take side of the humans/workers and strive for justice in any form or are advocating for recognition for worker's deeds and so on. Don't avoid office politics if you can and want to act like a mini-corporations, can be absolutely ruthless and can throw anyone under the bus if it results in the net positive value for your career. If you tend to skew towards the first group, supporting underdogs and people abused by the company, then supporting them is morally right but net negative to your personal career. Only people who skew to the second category should really engage in office politics.
• jongjong 1y ago
  The article makes a very astute point. If you don't engage in politics, those who do will call the shots and lead the company down the wrong path. Also, in my experience, it's generally true that the people who don't like engaging in politics are often better at making good decisions which benefit the group. They tend to be more logical and more team-focused; less emotional and less self-centered. This probably explains a lot of our political problems.
• mcqueenjordan 1y ago
  If you want to do great work, that usually happens in environments with minimized politics. It's probably bad career advice to completely avoid politics (most places aren't doing great work) but it depends on what you're optimizing for. The problem with everyone getting into the political game is that then we have everyone talking and noone building.
• incomingpain 1y ago
  GPTzero says 99% AI generated. But I want to comment, this is something I learnt early on in my career. Early in my career our boss let us drink at work. He knew most work was done in the morning and so he allowed us to drink in the afternoon. Worked fine up until someone was having a bad home life and got smashed at work. Then drunk drove to a client and the client realized he was drunk. I wasnt privy to what happened with that, but then we lost the ability to drink. Not a problem for me... I rarely drank. Everyone else went on a quiet strike. The boss was a huge prick micromanager, the guys wanted to quit because it changed things; but they simply stopped doing work. Every ticket was created and then sent to the queue. Bare minimum got worked on. Months go by and the strike quietly lifted. The drunk guy found a new job. Months later at lunch they were trying to convince me to get drinking back; but they were trying to manipulate me. They were playing a power game to do it. So I "fall" into their trap and go talk to the boss. argue about the 5 monkeys, that leave the rule of no drinking in place but turn a blind eye to it. The boss was like 'why do you even care, you dont drink with them." he didnt even let me answer before he realized what was happening. >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. Backstabbing, power structures that arent immediately obvious. But negativity is easier and especially effective when you just let bad politics win. Trying to stay positive or out of politics is the right way. >It just means decisions get made without you. Yep. I'm finding myself in one of these right now. Im just staying out of it. Decisions are being made to punish me. >Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and influence in the service of good outcomes. This is what this AI article gets wrong. The 'bad politics' people think they are getting 'good outcomes' and if you play politics, you also think you're getting 'good outcomes' but how do you measure 'good'? >They want a world where technical merit alone determines outcomes. That world doesn’t exist and never has. Sure it does. This exists in the successful. Politics is what kills companies.
  • cindyllm 1y ago
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• lifter3101 1y ago
  The title says “don’t avoid politics”. Then the content says “what you think is politics is bad politics”, so instead the author suggests how to do good politics. Let’s apply the same structure to another important area of human relations: marriage. “Don’t be in a bad marriage — here’s how a good marriage looks like”. Sounds great as a writing exercise. Unclear how applicable it is in most of people’s real life circumstances.
• Mentlo 1y ago
  Great post. I’d just take it a step further and point out that this doesn’t stop at software or work. A person can not “not be in politics”. You can only choose to have politics that affect you happen without your input. That’s how you end up with bad governments (in your mind). The most important thing to learn about passivity is that it’s not a neutral position of exclusion. It is an active choice to not participate and be at the receiving end of the outcome.