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My advice is that you learn the political game. Otherwise you have a lifetime of resentment and disappointment ahead of you.
You don't need to use politics to do evil things. But you need to understand how it works and protect yourself. Nobody gets ahead by just doing good work.
The line for me has always been lying and sabotaging others, but I've found that even this sort of honesty gets you blindsided by those who don't share it. You don't anticipate it when you aren't in the habit of doing it.
As a thought experiment, try to re-imagine the idea of honour as a luxury, where people raised to value and expect it have been saddled with a privileged misapprehension that they do not have the power to enforce on their environments.
Viewed through this lens, an expectation of honesty and relationships with principles and interactions according to rules is an artifact, if not the definition, of a poor education - one that does not equip them to succeed in organizations that have optimized this costly luxury out.
Ending this thought experiment, consider how someone without that luxury and little exposure to it might operate, and what it might mean if to succeed, you had to leave a luxury you took for granted from a former life behind.
My recommendation would be to grieve it briefly, look forward to a time when it doesn't cost you dearly as it has, and then move on.
1. Corporate:
1a. Subordinates: In the corporate world firing people isn't as easy as it sounds. Put everything on paper. Good managers have lots of paper on their people. Good documentation lets you know who to promote, without implicit bias, versus who to fire if layoffs happen. This is why contractors are so common at many firms. Contractors are easy to fire.
1b. Managers: There are great managers and there are horrid managers. More often than not it comes down to personality. Does your manager know anything about you? Do they listen to you or care about your job? Good managers really show they care. No matter how much you suck they still want to provide you opportunities to propel your career. Incompetent managers look you are a line item. In the case of incompetent managers you aren't going to be a rockstar. Instead cover all your bases and check off all the blocks on the metrics the boss cares about. The goal is to tread water with comfort and not make waves. In this case a life raft is any opportunity to work under a different manager.
1c. Peers: Tread carefully.
1c I. Incompetence: Incompetent peers who are downing might try to pull you down with them. Don't let incompetent people dictate your quality of work. Be independent and grow a backbone in the face of their uncertainty. Always be helpful with frequent offers of assistance and guidance. Help them to learn and remain productive, but the bottom line is to deliver quality work to the project on time.
Ic II. Assholes: If they are assholes or too special for help then simply let them drown. If they do stupid things to harm product quality let the product owner know, but remember you are not their boss. If they don't make it at the current company they will always find work somewhere else.
1C III. Immaturity: Immaturity is rampant among young developers. Its weird how so many young developers, even when I was young, think they are so incredibly talented. I believe this is the dunning-krueger effect effect. Kindly remind the immature person when they step out of bounds, but keep a very safe distance. Typically immaturity stems from a lack of self-awareness similar to starting forest fires.
2. Military:
2a. Subordinates
2a I. Disobedience or Disrespect: Eliminate the problem immediately and directly in a very ad hoc manner. This is ok because they are owned by their superiors. The superiors must then care for them with directed guidance and mentoring. After you crush their emotions you have to empower them to make better decisions independently.
2a II. Incompetence: Counsel them on paper. Every major screw up goes on paper. This protects you and them, because lets your booses know you are working on it and maybe they need a different job. You need paper to prevent them from being promoted before they are ready. Putting things on paper with great specificity also imposes an action plan upon you to improve the individual.
2b. Superiors
2b I. Assholes. Pull them aside and kindly let them know they are burning all their bridges and although they don't see it yet they are drowning and nobody wants to save them. Give them an olive branch and be patient and respectful while they are being an asshole to you. Be a good example and encourage them to follow your lead before they really hurt themselves.
2b II. Toxic Leaders. The core of all toxic leadership is some sort of selfish quality. Document all the wrongs you see about them. Simultaneously report the evil bastard to the unit commander and let the unit commander you have already submitted the issue to the inspector general's office. Don't wait on this and don't be passive about it, because if they aren't screwing you they are screwing somebody else. This is one of those situations were the forced dichotomy isn't a fallacy. You really are part of the solution, part of the problem, or an immediate victim.
2b III. Incompetence. Stupid, unqualified, or unprepared people can be promoted to astonishingly high levels. This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but do their job for them, but don't let them take credit for it. Ensure the work gets done and everybody stays safe. Don't worry about a paper trail because actual incompetence is obvious and people talk. If their incompetence results in harm or high risk situations they will typically be removed before an investigation falls upon their boss.
2c. Peers
2c I. Toxic. People primarily interested in self-serving interests aren't leaders. Address this directly with both them and their boss. Document what you see, but keep it secretly to yourself. If the toxic behavior is bad enough to warrant an investigation it often comes down to paper and good paper will protect you and the toxic person's subordinate.
2c II. General Incompetence. Talk to them and figure out what's going on. Sometimes a life situation can arise that provides serious distractions. Help a buddy out and try to get them on the right track. If they continue to fail, well at least you did all you could to try to fix the problem... right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cannot agree more, this is a life lesson that should be taught in school. Especially in medium/large companies where you got rewards like promotions, bonuses and so on, then your colleagues are competitors. Pretty much like politics, the one over promising and under delivering wins over the quiet one that delivers.
exactly how much to promise is an art form over promising and under delivering isn't a sustainable model under promising too much and you won't get the chance to deliver there's a sweet spot somewhere in there, which can be sometimes tricky to find
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure we're getting a complete story here? The OP is what writers call an "unreliable narrator". We're seeing this through his very emotional lens. It's quite possible the other person did a lot of the "people" work that enabled the code to be written and distributed. In that case, it's a "we", not an "I", and focusing entirely on "I wrote the code", ignoring how it fit into the organization, is dismissing som…
If the OP is an unreliable narrator, then you shouldn't assume the guy isn't a snake, either. I have seen the case you're wary of: a technical, but poorly communicating, employee that resents the success of a well-meaning, less technical but better communicating coworker. I have seen good people like that, and I have seen snakes that pull the "we/I" as in the OP's story.
Generally, I don't see a lot of these "snakes" out in the real world, but I see a tremendous amount of misunderstandings, resentment, and righteous indignation. As I told the OP elsewhere, we're all the hero of our own stories, and everyone we disagree with is a villain. But ask the villain, and they think they're the hero. It's human nature. We don't want to admit that we might be wrong, that the people we disagree with might be right (or at least, the disagreement is not founded in malice).
So when I see situations like this, I rarely see snakes. I see misunderstandings that can be addressed with better communication and a good dose of humility.
Bluntly? You're letting anger and resentment cloud your judgment. Your colleague is clearly not incompetent. He just has different goals from you. He probably wanted to shift from a technical role to a managerial role, and he succeeded. That's not incompetent! And that's probably because he recognized his talents are better with people than with technology. So be happy for his success, rather than resentful of his pe…
> It seems to me like people skills are a weak spot for you. That's not true as I always hangout with the people in different teams, and, we get along pretty well. I just don't do kiss-ass to my boss and I don't take advantage out of situations. > Find ways to work together We worked together for two years on daily basis. And I overcome a lot of bad behaviours but I can't stand to report to him
Earlier quoted context omitted.
exactly how much to promise is an art form over promising and under delivering isn't a sustainable model under promising too much and you won't get the chance to deliver there's a sweet spot somewhere in there, which can be sometimes tricky to find
Is it a poem or you're just missing capital letters and punctuation?
I never heard anything about incompetence in your description. Technical debt can build up for myriad reasons not related much to competence. What I would suggest is not to approach this situation as how you can wall off or otherwise attack this person but, instead as a life lesson on the importance of interpersonal relationships and politics. Politics are a fact of life. Humans are social creatures. All things being…