A timely remainder on the realities of "Life/Work/Society/Groups" for everybody.
Politics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) is considered a dirty discipline but it is not so and is intrinsic to the life of any Social Animal and in particular to complex social structures like those setup by Homo Sapiens. Everybody needs to learn how to "play the game" albeit within whatever boundaries they choose to confine themselves to. It is human nature whether one be in a role of Engineer/Admin/Management/whatever that is at play here and cannot be wished away but needs to be faced. At the minimum one needs it to "protect" oneself from the games others play and which may lead one to be at the losing end.
Some relevant resources (in addition to the works of Jeffrey Pfeffer mentioned in the article);
I've found that the best way to deal with office politics is simply to refuse to play. The one place where I worked where this was a real factor (a bank) taught me that I really didn't want to spend the rest of my life to end up in middle age caught up in a web of responsibilities with my market value only maximized at my current employer. Freelancing was more risky, but far more educational and left me completely free to ignore the office politics, as long as I delivered value my bills would get paid and I didn't have to show up in any office. After more than a decade of that (and making reasonable money, not great, but definitely not bad either compared to my peers) I eventually founded the company that still exists in it's nth incarnation today.
I hate office politics as much as the next developer. This FT article is a very light "review" of a book called "7 Rules Of Power".
To save you time, here are the 7 rules:
1. Get out of your own way.
2. Break the rules.
3. Appear powerful.
4. Build a powerful brand.
5. Network relentlessly.
6. Use your power.
7. Success excuses almost everything you may have done to acquire power.
"Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed.
So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about."
As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.
> "So, it seems office politics is not optional' is based on the unstated premise: 'if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about.'"
The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. In those places, people are simply not allowed to not care about success or they'll get washed out because of low promotion velocity.
Having been in OLR/calibrations/etc at several FAANG and FAANG adjacent at a pretty senior level it always matters. Specifically when layoffs or top grading comes around the people with potential to advance are always more highly valued. Up and out never ends.
Also having been in FAANG calibrations, even when people are at so-called "terminal levels" the performance ratings distribution rules still become a problem.
There are often team members that are at terminal levels, not interested in promotion, but doing well relative to their level standard (i.e. performing at or near the next levels). Those team members often won't be happy with a "meets" rating and still expect a rating and bonus multiplier above "meets."
Meanwhile, had they been promoted, they'd probably be a solid "meets" and another team member that wants/deserve a promotion needs those above-meets ratings too.
Ratings distributions usually aren't bound to just one single level, nor are they done with all levels as a single bucket, but within certain level groups, having a terminal level + rating distribution shaping is an issue.
been FAANG adjacent a few times, but in several of F500s, and in different industries/verticals.
no "official" up-or-out in any of those, but definitely a thing in all of them. at a mid-to-senior level or above you're getting paid -- not FAANG pay, but in most cases pretty solid -- and you need to justify your existence. If you're not getting "atta-boys" on the regular then you're gonna get chopped.
One place fired all of the Architects, for example, because they felt they didn't really do much. Three quarters of "what does this team do to deliver" and they were gone.
I mostly found it notable that it's official enough for it to be an announced change in policy. At some places the "up or out" is more of an unofficial expectation, but my understanding from Google friends is that Google literally announced to employees (around 2019 I think?) that it's ok to stay at L4 now and a promotion to L5 is no longer required to keep your job. At the time it was interpreted as a cost-saving measure, that they wanted to slow down promotion pressure to reduce salary growth. Would be curious if these terminal vs non-terminal levels are formalized at other places too?
Given that L3 is basically entry-level at Google, it also suggests that they aren't doing much up-or-out anymore. Basically you only have to get promoted once?
Yes. I don't know how it works at other places, but at FB, according to the manager training I went through, after you were in a 'non-terminal' position beyond the time limit, they would evaluate you according to the rubric for the next level up.
Presumably, you would get bad reviews because you weren't doing the things for that level (it wasn't clear to me if you would be told that you were going to be evaluated at that level), and then you'd get on a 'performance improvement plan' and then likely terminated.
Thankfully, I wasn't a manager for long, and didn't have to see that happen.
Yes, the theory is that IC3/4 cost more than they produce. That being said it's really not that hard to advance at these junior levels, very little to do with politics and very much to do with becoming a competent and independently-productive engineer.
This isn't true at all at Google (well, wasn't, 2016-2023). The value was/is in signalling you don't care. Large portions of employees are ye olde Ivy League grad / 2nd generation wealthy. More WASP values than hacker values.
> The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures.
If given a choice between "up or out" and "up" is not what one wants to do (for whatever reasons), then "out" is the only path which might lead to happiness, as "here" is not an option allowed.
I was a manager in one of them. Under a certain level (which levels were called "terminal" because you could end your life there), too many "months at level" was officially deemed suspicious per the annual reviews guidelines, and subject to scrutiny and potential PIP.
Completely true. Not for all of them, but at least one.
FAANG is not a person. Your director is. And your director wants to empire build, which means the average count and level of the org under them must rise, partially via promotions.
I’m not sure why you came up with this statement, I’d love an explanation. Certainly people are apathetic about many things at FAANG, but they are rarely apathetic about their own career. No one is particularly happy about “coasters” (people who may or may not be coasting but aren’t playing “the game”) who are quite frankly singled out for victimization and almost everyone would rather that they quit.
Not my experience at Amazon. If an employee is performing but not growing, then their manager has some explaining to do as it is usually the case that the employee wants to grow but manager is not developing them the way they should be. I have seen plenty of cases where an employee just does not want to get promoted, the manager explains, and it’s fine.
- Your priors were correct but are newly out of date (no headcount growth since late 2021, completely new regime)
- "No one is particularly happy about “coasters”" - your word, your assertion
- quite frankly singled out for victimization and almost everyone would rather that they quit: I could see it, heard horror stories about Amazon, Google had great work/life balance. It absolutely was not expected you were busting ass for promo. Infamously you'd usually get a better grade by doing less. It was a "don't like tryhards" culture.
"If given a choice between "up or out" and "up" is not what one wants to do (for whatever reasons), then "out" is the only path which might lead to happiness, as "here" is not an option allowed."
You're doing it wrong. This is about politics, not happiness. If you aren't moving up, then you're a loser like the rest of us. Have to climb for power and money.
Perhaps I am, perhaps not. It depends on what one values I suppose.
> This is about politics, not happiness. If you aren't moving up, then you're a loser like the rest of us. Have to climb for power and money.
"Power and money" are antithetical to happiness. Ultimately, one can choose to pursue the former, the latter, or neither, but not both. Which is "better" is of course subjective and the subject of much thought by philosophers for millennia.
Not entirely true, some small fraction are so satisfied and so competent at their work that they actually engage in office politics in order to not to be promoted beyond their sweet spot.
Just an annecdote, but in my last team we were all Staff SWE except one Senior. He was clearly performing at Staff level and our manager wanted to promote him (not for manager stats, but for the IC).
He (IC5) clearly was not interested. He was happy with the pay and did not want all the other BS/Responsibilities that comes with Staff.
Indeed, "up or out" turns friends into rivals, prevents teamwork. Coworkers hoard info to prevent you looking too good compared to them. As result you can struggle to learn anything without being pushy or playing politics. If someone's doing a great job at work and they want to "coast" and do the same great job next year, seems good to me. But apparently not allowed in those up or out places. To anyone that finds that happening at work, my advice is GTFO. ;). ( I worked at place like this once. Happily managed to find a much nicer place to work after a year-and-a-half of it)
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I heard my company tries to push out people with low promotion velocity. I'm 12 years in with only 1 promotion. I'm the lowest velocity. I'm too stubborn (scared of finding a new job with a disability) to push out though.
As an aside, I also think this explains the "bamboo ceiling" phenomenon. South asian culture is comfortable with self-promotion--my dad taught me most of these rules from a young age--in a way I get the impression east asian culture maybe looks down upon. That plays out when you look at who is in management. So if you're an engineer (from any background) who wants to move up, consider reading this book.
People who are constantly asserting their own value are definitely looked down upon by a whole lot of their peers. If that's what you mean by "comfortable with self-promotion," it's a double-edged sword.
> So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about."
> As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.
Agreed. I think it's also a false dichotomy that you either have to "play the game" or "not play the game"; as most things, how much you want to "play the game" is a spectrum, and there's definitely merit in picking your battles. I ultimately don't care enough about most technical decisions in the products I've worked on to try to outmaneuver someone else who's trying to play politics, but if someone is actively politicking to try to affect _me_ specifically rather than the product, I'm not likely to stand by and let it happen rather than try to influence things. It's useful to be able to understand how office politics work from defensive perspective even if you don't plan to actively utilize it.
I think some of the debate here is that politics is always happening to you, you have no choice but to play the game. You can be passive or active, you are just choosing to be passive but you're still playing.
So, if you don't want to play it's still better to know the rules.
> As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.
I feel like you can still gain a lot of respect by loving to code. For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits. You'll have your name in documentation. A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring. That in itself all earns you valuable respect.
Perhaps it's not the same as making sure the CEO knows that you made this piece of software, and did this thing, and that thing... but it does make its way there in a healthy organization.
“For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits”
Or… you’re a busy body that likes to move files around and pretty things up leaving your name on the blame and making it look like you did a ton of work. All you did was open it/save it in VIM.
Let’s not praise false indicators. Lines of code isn’t a good measurement of quality, nor is lines committed.
The dude who probably had the most commits at our org was just chosen as the sacrificial lamb of the development team's share of cost cutting. Now I have no opinion of his work personally due to working separately and I generally thought highly of him as a person, but he was considered by some to be responsible for one of the most significant engineering f-ups in the history of the org. It is generally true that traumatic events resonate more deeply with people than positive ones. So you can quietly commit code all day everyday, but if your mistakes are more visible than your successes then you won't go far.
If you do 10x the work and fuck up at the same rate as everyone else, you will do 10x the fuck ups and they will just remember you as the guy who fucked up things all the time even though you didn't fuck up proportionally more than anyone else.
That’s one reason. Another reason is they’re struggling at home and need to earn more. Or that they think they were worthy of that promotion they were passed up for. Or perhaps is was because they got stiffed a Christmas bonus.
You zeroed in on one of the things I mentioned. You didn't consider the mentorship, writing documentation, or just general product ownership over time.
Of course, if your organization considers a firm handshake and constant eye contact more important than being a competent engineer, so be it.
Often those things happens outside of git src tree. Confluence or readthedocs in another process that gets completely overlooked by management’s “velocity calculator”.
> I feel like you can still gain a lot of respect by loving to code. For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits. You'll have your name in documentation.
None of these things garner respect, as respect is earned from people.
> A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring.
That is where respect resides.
> That in itself all earns you valuable respect.
How one interacts with, helps, and/or mentors people is what alone earns "valuable respect." An informal conversation with someone wanting to learn, resulting in a book recommendation, is far more impactful than a few commits.
>"Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed.
My last job, I was out of the office the vast majority of the time. I was working 50-60 hour weeks.
There wasnt enough time to sell myself to my boss. I did work out of the office with sales guys and the ceo quite often so I did sell to them. They loved me.
I would get back into the office and it was like everyone was caught up in a battle with each other. I tried my best to stay out of it, but you get drawn into that shit so quickly.
Specifically, there was a senior sysadmin who knew nothing about networking at war with the network admin. I was the only other network admin, so naturally I get drawn into it. So I would help out there to help him avoid that conflict. Then on multiple occasions I did the network work, but the other network admin thought the sysadmin did and started saying how bad of a job he did. But it was me...
Then the dreadful day where I was booked 4-6 weeks in advanced and there was work needed to be done. So they brought this other network admin in on my clients. Totally fine with me to have less on my plate. But then I get a phone call from my client telling me the network admin badmouthed me the entire time he was there. I got that recorded, provided it to HR. HR then said they cant just fire him because then I'd be the last network admin and im overloaded with work. They then let me in on something I shouldn't know. He also has another fireable offence being hateful toward a lesbian peer. She was awesome, no idea why he had a fued with her.
So I left the harassment complaint with HR. But like 3 days later my boss who rarely speaks with me comes into my office to tell me that the other network admin went through my tickets and found many problems. I stopped him there, i told him that that other network admin is harassing me, that i'm making it official now and he has to do something about it.
>That escalated quickly, if HR had a "file" on the other guy, what was the cause of firing?
the other guy never got fired. He about a month later found a new job and they were left with 40 sysadmins and 0 net admins.
As for my firing's reason, "No longer need my services"
>Did your manager like the other guy more?
No, not at all lol. Said boss had gone off on him multiple times, even knew he was looking for a new job.
But that's the thing with harassment, you really don't know what's true and what people think of you. Having been tainted by the harasser illegitimately.
So for all I know I was the worsest person on earth?
>Also why does it matter that the peer was a lesbian?
Sorry, unmentioned part. He was pretty christian and straight up told her she's going to hell for being a lesbian. While also making her life hell in terms of getting work done.
As someone who started at a big four firm 8 years ago in cyber consulting, a lot of this rings true outside of programming.
Especially the part about not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind.
I was the worker who kept their head down, did good work and built good networks with people around me early on in my career. I got a lot of feedback through 1:1 discussions that said "You do great work and particular people know that, but other people with influence don't".
You don't need to be a dick and push others around to show your value, but speaking up, being supporting of others openly and contributing in other areas help show people who you are.
All of this needs to be wrapped up under leaders who support growth.
While everything past 1 is cut-throat garbage, I'm not convinced that communicating what you've been doing is actually useless to the rest of the company. If you don't bullshit and just present your work then it's a good way for management to learn why projects went well/poorly, and a good way for you to organise your own thoughts and your stream of work.
There's a basic level of self-promotion - demos, emails, talks to other engineers or users about how to use the new thing you made, retrospective write-ups of failed projects - below which you're not telling other people enough about what you did.
It's wild to me that folks seem to be unable to figure out how to fix rot at large companies when this is such a toxic set of trials for selecting people to put in power
Society can't figure out how to stop the most toxic, corrupt and incompetent people from becoming high ranking politicians so it makes perfect sense for the same kind of rot to be endemic at large corporations.
Rotten people gravitate towards power and most of those who aren't rotten are cowards who won't do anything to stop them because that'd risk their own careers or their own relationships with people naive enough to fall for the rotten people who are climbing towards the top. The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon.
> The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon.
Or you know, competition from new companies that will replace them. So companies can't rot too much, they have to continue to provide at least a bit of value or get replaced.
The ones that are most fit for power may be the ones to least desire it, in which case they don't make any effort to get there...
If one cannot get rid of power concentration (e.g. by subsistence or federation) then democracy's playbook seems best (voting, transparency, checks and balances) or even random selection.
Well, my point being to change the rules of the game such that even if everyone is assumed to greedily (i.e. first order) optimize for their own goals this cannot easily cause the organization to rot.
A very simple application of this is the worker's council/Betriebsrat (though this one too can get infected by politics depending on implementation).
It's certainly a highly non-trivial issue and details matter a lot...
I feel like with the level of surveillance we point at ad targeting, if we just steered it in the right direction it would provide at least some clue in sussing out who is power gaming versus people who are earnestly trying to do good for the team
On a personal level I've developed a sense for when someone tends toward these behaviors, like when they downplay the contribution of someone who actually did work while promoting their "direction" which happened outside of recorded history
If you start a company, how do you avoid anyone trying to practice those 7 "rules" and BS-ify your company?
When some individuals do try this BS, can you correct or eject them fast enough, or is it inevitable that they take over?
Does BS-ification always start bottom-up, top-down, or it varies?
Is there a point at which a company as an entity consciously chooses BS for its operations (such as because there's a superior net result, or non-BS is deemed intractable or is not understood)?
Use tools to help workers estimate their contribution. Basically try to automate performance evaluation. You can't completely, but you can give bullshitters less opportunity to embellish.
And like the other commenter said, keep the company as small as possible. That way, each person's contribution is more prominent.
Won't this inevitably lead to the same familiar BS?
We already know that current tech workers start focusing on corporate BS metrics (e.g., FAANG interviews) while still in school.
Even getting into the college was its own gauntlet of BS of resource-intensive hoop-jumping, questionable metrics, artifice, and self-promotion.
CS students have already been told how to strategically pick their first job, how to work promotions, when to job-hop, to have no loyalty to project and team, to network, to self-promote, etc.
By the time tech workers hit their first job, they've practically been engineered and filtered to be corporate BS machines.
Part of the trick might be to un-train that. And to filter for people who can be un-trained.
You don't measure it; you model and estimate it. That's why I said "hire an organizational economist". It's a complex problem. The estimate would be fuzzy, but that's a given.
One major way to keep this out of your company is to come up with an interview process that can't be gamed or BSed. I suspect that people who are good at gaming their way through interviews are also likely to BS-ify your company.
I cringe a little reading that list, but I do think people should spend time thinking about, and communicating their worth.
I'm in games development, and many years ago when I worked in a big studio we used to do these Friday afternoon meetings where people would stand up and show off the best work they did during the week.
The artists would show off a cool new character model, or a programmer might show how the pathfinder improved, or some nice new animation blending.
I'm sure some people hated it, but I think it was really great for the whole team to sit around and congratulate each other for what was achieved that week.
How different is this from, Be an open and optimistic communicator, exploit opportunities vigorously as they arise, show confidence in your track record and your thinking -- for the good of yourself and the business? In other words, "office politics" does not have to be odious.
What you consider success is up to you. The criteria you listed may matter to you or they may be other peoples’ criteria of success.
Perhaps success for you is “known as important enough that I’m never on the layoff list”. And “get to spend time with my family; can avoid the death march programs”.
> "Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed.
The best business advice I ever received came in a dream in which All Might (from My Hero Academia) told me: "If you want to succeed and get recognized at work, you must let your company know: 'I am here!'"
Here's the truth about office politics: it's a rat race trap. You spend your life away jockeying for attention, resources and org chart positions. You go through immense stressors, let others down and get let down, swallow your mental peace - only to jockey for a higher position in the ladder. Every rung of the ladder is just being more and more assistant to your boss. You just CANNOT have your boss think badly of you. It's an abusive attachment. You grind and grind away, only to get laid off because some distant boss wants it to happen.
Imagine a video game where monkeys spend their lives climbing an imaginary rung, only to find that reaching the top rung is the same as falling from a middle rung - both are "game overs"
The point isn't to play politics at the expense of your happiness. Awareness of the political reality allows you to more effectively reach your goals. I used to do great work without caring whether I got recognition, because I just like to keep my head down and write code. However, I've learned that by showcasing my work, collecting metrics, etc. I am able to gain credibility that allows me to sell management on projects I'd like to take on. Playing a little bit of politics has made work more enjoyable.
What you are engaging in is a double edged sword. In your case, what you have is incompetent management that needs some BS (metrics) to be constantly fed to themselves. The quarter you don't feed BS metrics to them will be the quarter they try to manage you out.
An alternative system is one where management is responsible for understanding the business value of the work and being ok with the outcome e.g. being ok with good metrics vs poor metrics both - whatever the outcome. It was the path they charted for some objective. They need to own the objectives.
If I had your attitude about this my work life would be significantly less enjoyable. I like my team, I like my manager, I like the product, and playing the game just a little bit makes my life much easier. It doesn't actually matter whether the game is bullshit.
> If I had your attitude about this my work life would be significantly less enjoyable. I like my team, I like my manager, I like the product, and playing the game just a little bit makes my life much easier. It doesn't actually matter whether the game is bullshit.
It's not so much about not playing a BS game at all. Play it all because that makes the $$. But, it is very important to keep the BS in mind at all times.
As an individual, it's very hard to avoid incompetent managers. There are so many different ways a manager can fall short, and it's often very difficult to assess before joining a team. Even if you have a personal connection to someone on the manager's team, they may not be very observant or may not even realize something could be better. Also, there's a practical limit to how many times you can change managers. This means it's important to learn certain communication skills even if you wouldn't need them with an ideal manager.
In the past, I failed as a manager to protect the good-hearted and passionate people in my teams. The upper management were abusing them at every chance. And their competence and dedication only made them less likely to be promoted because it would take multiple people to do their job. The typical lifecycle is the CEO/CTO/Mids burn the good ones to the point they quit (and then they might offer doubling their salaries or something). This happens both in startups and large orgs. It seems like an unwritten rule in tech management.
You can learn the politics and choose not to play it. It’s still useful to understand why people act the way they do and never be surprised by things that affect you.
Indeed integrity isn't. You're misrepresentating my comment. Perhaps privilege is too much of a trigger word these days.
Depending on ones economic situation, not playing the political game could mean being on the street, losing your kids, etc. In that sense, it can be a privilege offered to those with the financial freedom. This doesn't mean in any way that you can't do it with integrity.
It's not about sinking, it is about a totally different skill set. There's no good/bad here, it just IS. Also, your statement implies you are "above" other people, which is so arrogant, it is almost like you are the people you despise.
Ive relied on the same formula for office politics for decades:
1. write all the code
2. Noone can fire you
3. Ignore all the politics and wait for everyone to quit and/or the company to lay everyone off. Nobody is left so now you're the manager ! Go get the next job
Eventually you may realize that maintaining the image of the productive a-political cornerstone, is in fact a political move. That is reputation management. You're "above it".
That's the true meaning behind politics being non-optional.
Right. Even the top commenter right now about just being interested in coding and learning is playing. They are playing the “engaged IC”. You can bet the political people know how to use and abuse that role just like any other.
I think politically obsessed people are just invading all the conversation in an attempt to be relevant, a lot of politically obsessed people are just not that important.
Not playing is simply, not playing. Apolitical is a position of apoliticalness, not politicalness. Attempts to change the meaning of these words is laughable.
One fish says to the other fish: how's the water? He replies: what's water?
Politics is just people, and people's perception of you. It's talking to folks to effect change, ideally a positive change. It's when you sit down with someone to review their code and suggest a different way. It's when you discuss someone's strengths with their boss so they can get better work. It's when you email someone to make sure they saw your merge request so you can get it done faster. It's literally the people side of a business, and knowing who to ask for what, how to ask, and so on.
When someone gets all Machiavelli with those relationships, making sure the right people know what they're working on, or trying to get inside information on upcoming projects, or etc, and then used that to their own advantage then we suddenly call it politics. But that's just shitty people playing politics primarily.
Work relationships and lines of power and communication are not optional. They exist. What you do with them does not determine if you are in a political game or not, it just determines how you play it.
TFA probably was read to say "You have to be Machiavellian". I think it's fair to say that's an over statement. But pretending or purporting to be antipolitical is an oxymoron. To whom are you pretending? A straightforward a-political style request or response must still define a relationship style.
> Ive [sic] relied on the same formula for office politics for decades:
> 1. write all the code
While this is personally gratifying, it designates a person as a "single point of failure", often expressed colloquially by management along the lines of "what if <person X> was hit by a bus?"
> 2. Noone can fire you
Everyone can be fired, no matter what value they provide to the organization, given enough pain experienced by stakeholders. Or politics.
> 3. Ignore all the politics and wait for everyone to quit and/or the company to lay everyone off. Nobody is left so now you're the manager ! Go get the next job
Me thinks I detect a slathering of sarcasm now. :-)
The politics, from the second I joined, were so over-the-top. It was like Wrestlemania. Everyone was smashing eachother and throwing elbows and it was like a spectator sport about who could club who first and the loudest.
I had just gotten out of a super toxic prior employer and had zero motivation to engage in corporate politics so I just decided to wait and watch and try to understand how to be effective.
I waited. And watched. And waited. And watched. And raised some ideas. All shot down. Finally I came to the realization that if I wanted to "play this game" I would need to get into the ring and start shutting people down, throwing elbows, telling other people their ideas suck etc.
After thinking about it a long time, I decided:
(a) I didn't want to do any of the above
(b) I cared about building things good for customers
(c) I hated the VPs involved and had nothing in common with them
(d) I didn't want their jobs, because it would require doing what they were doing
I ended up leaving for a startup.
It was a very good company. I still think about if it was the right thing to do. But I was not growing, not getting to do anything, it was antithetical to my personal and career growth, I wasn't learning. It was just a wrestling ring with morons yelling at eachother and acting out their insecurities loudly.
I couldn't do it.
Contrast to prior employer: EVeryone was political, but in a sneaky, underhanded way. It was all covert assassination.
At a startup, there was no bullshit. It was: There is the work, do the work. The end.
No politics.
With remote work: Politics is even worse in my opinion. Remote workers are at a huge disadvantage.
> The politics, from the second I joined, were so over-the-top. It was like Wrestlemania. Everyone was smashing eachother and throwing elbows and it was like a spectator sport about who could club who first and the loudest.
This is phenomena I've seen played out in organizations which are flush with cash and want to hire "only the best", yet end up having multi-layered management building fiefdoms in order to affirm their importance.
Bored smart people will find a way to make their days feel important. If it is not in the work they do, then it will be the political fights they have.
The organizations that actually do 'hire only the best' never claim it.
There's probably less than 50 such places, total, on Earth, where every single engineering position is occupied by a bonafide, legitimate, super-genius. It's a small enough group that the posers can be immediately identified.
> There's probably less than 50 such places, total, on Earth, where every single engineering position is occupied by a bonafide, legitimate, super-genius.
What are these places?
Outside of a research lab, even if you had infinite money and hiring power, would you even want to staff a company where "where every single engineering position is occupied by a bonafide, legitimate, super-genius"?
If you're doing engineering (as opposed to pure research) the reality is that there's always a lot of unexciting work. Your super-geniuses don't care to do that, what you need is people who are smart enough, but more importantly reliable and willing to keep showing up and doing the work even when there's zero chance it puts them on track for a Nobel price (or field equivalent).
Ignoring that for a moment (although we shouldn't, different fields are different), their jobs page lists an opening for a Web Programmer that pays 143k-159k range in NY (i.e. very little). I'm guessing this role doesn't require notable publications and they're not looking for a "bonafide, legitimate, super-genius" to fill this role.
(Or if they are, they will never ever fill the role with that salary. They'd be fools to try and I assume they are not fools.)
That was my point. Companies will hire top talent for the revenue-leading roles but quite rationally don't need to do that for every single engineering role (as OP claimed) because there are plenty of jobs where a trustworthy responsible adult who gets the job done is exactly what they need, even if they don't have a Turing Award.
Also, why does having many "notable publications" make someone "the best"? That seems pretty arbitrary and subjective. How many Academic Publications™ does John Carmack have?
I would say some can claim it and do it, however...
The ones that try and claim it but have salary caps 100% cannot claim it. You cannot have leveled pay bands (IC3-IC8) and claim the best. You also cannot have percentile based pay vs the market and claim the best, you have to pay at 99% percentile.
What you describe feels like the inevitable end-game of what the article is promoting, and why I can't subscribe to it.
I think there's a flipside to the argument too. If "good work" isn't enough, it means that those responsible for managing the employees doing "good work" aren't paying enough attention and that creates the need to self-advertise for promotion, as the article describes. But if there's an attention vacuum is it not also possible to hide, to some extent: as long as you continue to do good enough work to stay off the "bad" radar, then fit whatever you want into the spaces in between: Alternative productivity.
I have a current theory about the application of KPIs and OKRs for measuring performance: they're to take the responsibility of actually managing people off the managers who are meant to be managing people; Outsourcing the management, oddly, to the managed.
I'm currently three months through an experiment to see what happens when the vanilla "standard" OKRs I've been given aren't added to, ticked off or reached, or really measured against at all. I feel that I do good work, but I don't feel the need to prove it beyond the doing of it.
I understand the extensive overheads for things like backups and disaster recovery. I don't understand per-employee administrative overhead to measure contributions to "delighting the Customer" (actual example).
If I don't get a pay rise, or worse, as a result of this experiment, then it's been a success in helping to make an important decision.
I have been thinking a lot about exactly your point here: That a lot of knowledge work seems to emphasize letting the employee manage themselves. SCRUM is this also. Which leads to the question: "what is management even doing / what is management for?"
I once read a book that management is purely about surveillance. They are purely there to watch you. Narcissists, as a personality trait, are people watchers who like control. So basically you end up creating a class of people who are almost guaranteed to be narcissistic in nature.
Corporations are veritable laboratories of mind control, psychology and propaganda. It is really quite complex and weird about how it actually works. It is otherwise totally illogical.
It's a very subtle and complex "thing" so I'll disclaim that this is only part of it, and it meshes together with other parts, but Management is also for decision making, direction provision, and, to some degree, parenting (see last paragraph for where that somewhat crossed over).
Where it really stirs up the concepts into a fine mud is that, in order to be able to make decent decisions, you need to know both business direction from above as well as decision / direction practicality from below, and the more that management becomes removed from on-going engagement with below (eg. outsourcing performance monitoring, lack of involvement in SCRUM) the further their decisions are removed from understanding the practicality.
Surveillance, as the terminology used, is loaded to create fear, which probably serves the needs of bad managers. Good managers should be engaging with their reports to know what they're working on, and to know them psychologically, so they know to ask more probing questions if someone is hiding an issue for fear of upsetting "the boss". Good managers know up the ladder and down the ladder and should be constantly working on finding the balance between each in order to maximise both the productivity of their reports and the progress made in business directions.
One of the reports I had (albeit briefly) was very emotionally attached to his work, and took it personally even when there were requests to make changes to fit it into changing requirements. I love the guy, but he needed fairly regular vent-sessions to talk him through, and out of, the (unnecessary) emotional state in order to reach "oh, this is what I'm paid for".
(funny story: I once got so exasperated with him that I called him my son's name - man that was embarassing for both of us).
When people ask what L1 managers do and why are they necessary, this is the thing that hits the hardest. ICs don't understand that there are 1000s of issues like this that need "managing" to get productivity out. It is exhausting and most managers I assume don't want to have to do this, but it's required.
One of the key challenges that lies in remote work is the inability to truly know what's going on. You can have an idea, but you'll likely faces situations you cannot predict or cannot defend against.
Back in an office after 10 years remote including my own startup.
I cannot believe how important real, face to face and coexisting is. As someone actively trying to get stuff done, it’s a super power. The ability to cut through organizational inertia is amazing!!
Remote work is like working with another group of people that are all overseas. You’ll be called into a meeting once in a while to find out everything has been decided without you.
I have been in multiple situations where they actively plot, or simply dont care, and come up with some plan without you at your expense. Very challenging to deal with.
I've known a number of great people who have at one point in their life had a string of bad luck due to bad people, and do you know what's the worst, most assholish thing you can say to someone who's in such a fragile state? "Could the problem be you?"
Tech is one of those places that have an unstable enough common culture as to attract every yabo with a theory of management. So you end up with many shitty cultures, where shitty people thrive (and the odd gem).
"Management" is a dirty word in this industry, and the answer most people give is "Oh, we're a flat organization" or "Oh, we run like a family" etc, which just hides the hierarchies and fosters dysfunction. The industry really has a big problem, and strings of bad employment experiences are a symptom.
I agree that this happens, but it’s just a fact of life. We are all born different and those differences make us more or less suited to certain jobs.
I can never be a professional basketball player because I wasn’t born with the right genetics for it. Some neurodivergent traits might make jobs in management or public communication difficult or impossible, but they could be a boost for other kinds of work like programming and research.
In my experience (two decades) you don’t have to play politics or participate, BUT - you do have to understand what’s happening and how it affects you.
Having fallen ass-backwards into a couple of promotions to positions responsible for managing (very) small groups, I don't consider it worthwhile - and that's without having to sell my soul by engaging in office politics.
One interpretation is as per the title "play the game or be the victim", my interpretation is "the only way to win is not to play". Office politics only escalates the higher you get.
As completely as I can commit to anything, I believe that any time spent on office politics is time better spent on almost anything else. Those who seek money, power, and influence may disagree to their hearts content, but I've experienced enough, personally and vicariously, to know that their opinions are from a universe I do not, and can not happily, inhabit.
The caveat to the above is that I'm in a position where I can provide for my family without feeling like I vitally need to sacrific any amount of who I am in order to give them "more". All needs and probably more than enough wants are met. Maintain the balance...
When I was company founder and had multiple people working for me, I thought there was no office politics. My right hand man (who was always happy to tell me exactly what he thought) laughed.
Every large organization is going to have competing interests and ideas. Whether it’s a difference in priority or project approach or perhaps an entire product.
Knowing how to navigate conflict is essential to any relationship including professional one. In addition knowing how to well communicate (e.g., sell) your ideas (or youself) is also needed.
I get there’s toxic individuals to take this to a dark place as they would anything. But at its core I don’t see anything inherently evil about it, perhaps just that it can make manipulative people become more public.
Well said. It does follow the network effect of propagating through systems. It requires important nodes to not spread further down and the close collaboration of other supporting nodes.
Anyone slightly higher in the hierarchy can have an effect.
Personal alternative, started to work for a family business with a grey collar culture where people know each other. No need to read weird self-help literature. If 'networking' is a central part of anyone's job personally I'd start picking a less Patrick Bateman-esque workplace.
The best way to not have to deal with backstabbing and conniving is just to work with people who are in it for the long term and where that behavior does not pay off.
yes, a work environment where you have a sort of mix of white and blue collar culture both individually and collectively rather than the "manager on the top floor, worker at the bottom" thing. Companies where the boss is also able and willing to grab some tools and get to work. Flat hierarchies and informal relationships, not the 15 levels to the top ladder thing. Prototypical example is a German or Japanese small/medium business, but software startups often are a lot like it too. They just lose it generally as they blow up and transition to the typical US/British management style.
My dad was burnt by not involving in office politics at school. He didn't go to parties, he didn't go to social events, and he didn't largely pay attention in meetings. It ... did not go well for him. He figured it out at the end, but never did figure out how to engage well.
Mind, he was likely autistic, carrying many of the signs. Not very relevant, but perhaps a good reminder.
If you work in government there's way less of all that. Of course you can't top out a massive salaries like at FAANG but whatever most important ... tons of money & stress or a very good living and not much stress or drama (ppl in government mostly are not clawing at themselves to climb a ladder rather its a nice paying gig with mostly nice ppl doing their job).
I think this depends very much on which government agency and at what level (federal, state, local). I know people who have had the sort of good experience you describe in government. I also know people who have worked in government jobs where the workplace was highly dysfunctional and most of the workers had no interest in actually doing their jobs.
Maybe those who described it dysfunctional were dysfunctional and or under 40.
I say under 40 cause after 40 you start to care less about what others think annd are much more comfortable in your skin ..that goes with others too in the same demographics.
Thus if you are working with more ppl who are insecure (younger person thing) worrying too much /trying to out do each other due to insecurities then that's a dysfunctional environment and describes the demographic at most FANNG company's compared to government.
> Maybe those who described it dysfunctional were dysfunctional and or under 40.
In the cases I was referring to, particular events were described to me which, if true, would be extremely dysfunctional in a workplace by any reasonable criterion. In some of the cases, I personally observed such events on visits to the workplaces in question.
It varies, in my experience. I've worked in government agencies with very little politics, and agencies with shitloads of workplace politics. The latter perform far worse than the former. The political agencies tend to have ill-defined goals, which causes misalignment which in turn generates politics.
It's funny, I've been a developer for 40+ years, been coding since the 80's. I always thought I would "just" write code, but around year 25, I realized I had outgrown programming and wanted to make bigger things, with greater reach. This meant not just entire products, but product lines, product strategies, brand identities.
After this realization, it took me a decade to see that office politics exist because you are literally trying to steer the company, and so are other people, and you will disagree. I guess I haven't been fucked hard enough yet, because I enjoy this process. Some people call it a game, but I think it is just reality: if you want to do big things, you need an entirely new set of problem solving skills.
40 year old me would have scoffed at 58 year old me as a sellout, but here I am, enjoying it far more than debugging C code for a paycheck. I only debug my own C code now, and layout my stereo amplifiers circuits, even if they suck, because it doesn't impact my paycheck!
I'm about 5 years behind you, career-wise, and have been transitioning to that way of thinking the past several years and am now in a position to actually get to do it. It is weird to realize that coding, while I still kinda like it, feels like a waste of time. By that I mean too little of an impact. It's fun, but stressful, in this "new" role. I'm still debugging systems, but I now include the human/organizational element. Not really a manager, but not really an engineer either. Very strange - any advice?
I thiiiink I know where you are, so here's my $0.02.
$0.01 - Don't overachieve other peoples' work, keep boundaries. I'm an overachiever, but I found that when people around me start to miss things I would do their work. Two levels above me are blind to who does the work, they just want it done. If I'm getting others' work done people will expect me to keep doing it. While this might jeopardize the product if I stop doing it, it is important to not be the one that cleans up everyone's messes because it will kill your soul and the mess never really gets cleaned up. Sometimes things need to break and be visible at the top level for change to happen. This becomes more important as you start to manage more products at higher levels.
$0.01 - Define requirements and deliverables exquisitely, since you can't solve all of your problems just by putting in more time. When I was a dev, I could pull an 80 hour week and finish something. But now I depend on 150+ engineers, and I cannot simply work more hours to fix things. Make your peace with that, and instead work on having very clear requirements. The more effort you put into clearly defining what you need, the more you can feel at ease with letting go and letting people do their thing.
Bonus: don't be afraid to say "no". You gotta protect your sanity. If someone wants to blow past you and win all the gold medals, let 'em. There are always going to be people that will work 200%, I'm just not willing to sacrifice what's left of my life. I'm by no means a slacker, but there is ALWAYS 300x more work to be done no matter how efficient you and your teams are.
You can't afford to put 0% into understanding or playing "the game," but that doesn't mean it should be the majority or a significant part of your work.
It needs to be enough that your boss/boss' boss can recall a positive association between you/your work and what they care about. Some of this is your manager/boss' job, but at least try to make it easier for them to do.
This is also a decent self sanity check on figuring out if what you're doing is important to do (with regard to the business, etc)
Politics certainly play a part in most of society. I'm not sure that it's more common or sinister in the office setting. I also believe that some enjoy it.. one need not look farther than the success of reality TV.
I believe it boils down to scarcity and the seemingly odd human attraction to drama. Even in the US, where there's plenty of wealth, life can still be darwinian.
Pessimism aside, there are definitely opportunities out there without these qualities.
It would be so interesting to try to build an organization that tries & works to discern, rather than leaving everyone to fend for themselves & playing the game.
There's various systems of 360 review, but they seem to silently boil out into a discussion between manager and employee. To actually combat "the game", we need both a real attempt at direct & honest assessment first, and we need to radiate out the findings, share awareness & impact second. As we do it, the structure of the org is still implicit, game-bases: we need to make it clear what these witnesses & testimonies have sussed, share our understanding of things are seem now.
Actual decision making power needs to be vested in people based on the results. These reviews to serve the corporate need to assess never seem to come around & reify the findings: they're left a mystery to employees and power remains a structureless tyranny, to forever be interpreted by game players as they may.
Down with the game players. Do good shit instead. (Empower interesting people, even if they don't play the game.)
I minored in sociology, a degree that some would consider "useless" but it's been absolutely invaluable in navigating the social dynamics within the various engineering orgs I've worked for.
Agreed. When I worked at a big tech company (let's say top 3) one person suggested the creation of a race-based committee (no whites allowed) that would receive complaints about any org members' personal social media - if they said something racist or insensitive, said committee would have the power to fire the person from the company. Org had 800 people, there were 153 likes on the post. I complained to HR about the tone and proposal and nothing happened. Days later, the post disappeared miraculously. I seriously doubt these 153 idiots liked the idea - most likely than not they are exactly the conformist cowards you describe.
All the "players" I know are on medication, period. I suspect cancer is following (just my view I have no source). So thanks but no thanks.
For me the next benchmark after perceived happiness is wether or not you're on medication (with rare exceptions). It you're on medication (rare exceptions apply), you can be driving the most beautiful of cars, your life is shit. Rare exceptions apply like you're working on something great or you have inherited your condition. You get the idea.
You think your job and you politics and your thoughts are not responsible for your condition? You think it's the cat? You havent read the manual.
Food and the people you're spending time with are critical. You can be sick because you deal with a toxic person, particularly relatives or intimate relationship. Leaving that person will make a seemingly unrelated sickness disapear almost overnight (asma, back pain, etc.). It happened to me and my father. No rocket science here.
Thats why they all on medication in offices. They are toxic to each other, they get sick. It's just that sometimes the person go from toxic parent to office and never realize whats causing the disease.
I'm pretty sure neither my diabetes nor my high blood pressure, both of which I take medications for, were caused by "toxic co-workers". What you're writing sounds like new-age gobbledy-gook, not far removed from crystals and auras (or shoving rocks up your...)
Let me tell you a mistake you're making. If I present you with a liquid in a jar that smells toxic, you're saying "we havent proven this liquid is toxic". Even though your own nose is telling you it just might be.
At Microsoft I was specifically told to not phone-screen female candidates -> they were to go straight to the loops. Additionally, one SDE (woman, non-white, former military) verbally abused another SDE (also a woman) during a customer call, causing the customer to call the VP and tell him this was unacceptable. I handled the case as best as I could (and was supported by the team of 60% women SDEs in doing so) and built a very strong case for the Microsoft investigators to work with. She disappeared right afterwards.
Fast forward a few weeks - she was put on a leave and returned in a position 2 levels above what she used to have, working directly under a C-officer of the company.
You're not paying attention then. Office politics applies to everyone. It's the one meritocratic thing about business. The person who's better at manipulating people goes to the top, regardless of race, gender, etc.
On average I expect promotions to be meritocratic; in that the further up the hierarchy we sample the more likely we are to get exceptional people.
That being said, if I were looking for a career in management I'd rather be female. In most of the workplaces I've been they've got a decided advantage at promotion after controlling for motivation and political savvy; and around a third of the girls in my university year moved in to senior management positions.
Promotions are not meritocratic. You get promoted if you are useful to the person promoting you; you'll play ball, follow orders, know a secret, can do a favor, are reliable, don't ruffle feathers, under promise and over deliver, make friends easy, etc. That's not merit, that's corruption.
This is true for one simple reason: Promotions are not weighed by an impartial algorithm, chosen by sorting, and doled out on a set schedule. They are submitted for consideration and approved by the powerful, when they feel like it, for whatever reasons they feel like.
The further up the hierarchy you go, the less exceptional people are. It's called the Peter Principle. Even if you used to be exceptional at your job, a promotion gives you a different job. And technical skill has almost nothing to do with ability to get promoted.
The only reason women might be promoted more is they're working twice as hard as the men. I'm sure if you asked them, they would rather have been men, when it comes to getting promotions. The bar would be a lot lower.
Women get paid the same as men for the exact same job with the same performance. The studies that show the opposite are taking the pay for all women and dividing it by pay by all men (summarizing).
Completely true. All you need to do is look around at professional associations. "Women in <industry>" abounds. "Blacks in <industry>" and "Latinos in <industry>" and "<Industry> LGBTQ+ club". Identifying with one or more "minorities" is your key to networking and belonging.
I grew tired of seeing groups which excluded me, so I joined some Irish and Scottish business networks. They are very small, and concentrate not on diaspora but on homegrown businesses in weird and disparate industries.
At least as a Catholic, I have been able to join ministries, retreats and service organizations for men.
It sounds reasonable to me. If others are making groups based on characteristics opposing the dominant strand of the population but the dominant strand is not making any exclusionary group like the minorities are, then the minorities may have two places to belong (the total group everyone shares and their own in-group) while the dominant strand only has one group, with no in-group.
