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Don't avoid workplace politics

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#141

Post by rockercoaster »

timr wrote: post #115
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and…

> As usual HN comments are more on point than the article....I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. You're just naming legitimate stakeholders (the C-suite) and asserting that they're illegitimate. I grant you that playing golf…

> So maybe a case of HN comments being "more on point than the article", but primarily in the way that it directly illustrates what the author is saying: engineers routinely bail out of the politics, to their own detriment.

IDK about everyone else, but I pretty routinely bail out of the politics of decisions when it's mostly to the company's detriment. Starts to look like an uphill battle against people above me on the food chain? Sure man, go ahead, not my money you're wasting. The only politicking worth doing in those cases is making sure I'm outside the blast radius if it's something so bad it's gonna eventually blow up. Luckily big businesses move so slowly that this rarely takes less than a year, and often quite a bit more.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#142

Post by Spooky23 »

garciasn wrote: post #70
eawgewag wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the article is great, in theory; it just NEVER works this way in practice, unless you may be in a technical organization. There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail. We regularly see the articles about the failure rate of technical projects all the time on the front page. Why is this? Because the number and weight of the business folk almost always outnumber the technical. You can…

Engineers are always insufferable with this stuff. I can think of dozen times where everything was perfect, except for or .

There’s a million reasons why projects fail, but astute engineering mangers who are able to understand what the business really needs are invaluable.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#143

Post by JustExAWS »

surgical_fire wrote: post #130
scarface_74 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I as a self interested actor as we all are see nothing wrong with: 1) Since around 2008 I’ve had 8 jobs after staying at my second job for nine years. Whether I was laid off or chose to get another job because of salary compression and inversion, being able to get a job quickly - and it’s never taken me more than a month even in 2023 and last year - was partially because at now 51, I have made damn sure I stay up to…

Regarding #1, when people ask what is the best skill I acquired during my career, I always answer that it was "learning how to do well in interviews". For a very long time it was the only thing I focused. Quite often the job itself is pretty easy, getting in is the hard part. In the past couple of years I let it slide a bit because keeping yourself sharp for interviews is sort of a pain in the ass, but I promised nys…

It depends on what type of interviews you expect. My value proposition hasn’t been my ability to write code for over a decade. It was first being the first or second technical hire by a then new director/manager/CTO brought in to lead a new initiative as a lead/architect and then working in customer facing cloud consulting roles combined with hands on keyboard coding.

With those roles, it’s all about soft skill behavioral interviews and system design. I can do those in my sleep. I just keep a career document of all of my major projects and describe them in STAR format so I can review them when needed.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#144

Post by WCSTombs »

alarge wrote: post #17

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 l…

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.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#145

Post by ryandrake »

BeetleB wrote: post #99
rkomorn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your description of "politics" as a negative/pejorative thing. That's also the only way I'm used to hearing it. Hearing about "politics" in a neutral/positive way would be new to me.

> I agree with your description of "politics" as a negative/pejorative thing. That's just a difference in framing between winners and losers. If you get your way, you say it was due to influence, bridge building, teamwork, etc. If you don't, you say "politics". For every occasion someone says "politics" negatively, realize the other party is using the other framing. More importantly: For every time you get your way,…

The way I see it is: "Office politics" means getting work done, making business decisions, and/or advancing your career using means other than technical or domain expertise. It could have a good or bad outcome, but it's still politics. The key attribute is that the outcome is achieved through some other method besides actually doing or directing the work.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#146

Post by some_guy_nobel »

eawgewag wrote: post #132
some_guy_nobel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?

I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just need to recognize what you can benefit from.

Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up."

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#147

Post by WCSTombs »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #43

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.

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.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#148

Post by bluGill »

johnfn wrote: post #64
citizenpaul wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and…

I feel that a lot of the times conversations around this topic end up with some anecdote like "well, playing politics doesn't actually work because I work at a dysfunctional company where decisions are made by morons". If you have a C-suite that makes decisions based on golf games, this advice is not for you. You have a different set of problems. You should absolutely address those problems. But that doesn't mean tha…

If the C-suite makes decisions "based on golf games" then you need to learn how to play golf. You don't have to be good, but don't be so bad that you slow up the game. It is okay to be 1-2 over par every hole, but you need to nearly always find your ball and not hit too far into the rough. Take some lessons if needed. (there are swings that don't have as much power but are a lot easier to be accurate - perfect for you who doesn't want you win, you just want to be good enough to play the game). Then make sure you are on the list of people who will "complete your four-some" when anyone is looking for someone to play.

Nothing wrong with being good at golf above if you want to. However this is about politics and that just means good enough to play and talk about the game.

edit: over par not under...

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#149

Post by ryandrake »

jaymzcampbell wrote: post #82
exmadscientist wrote: post #31

> 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 pres…

I've always used "we" when describing and presenting work done as part of a team, even if solo. There's a certain skill in knowing when to promote yourself, and how you do so. These days I tend to be positive in a group sense, and take direct specific ownership of failings. I may be lucky but I think this has led to a lot of respect from coworkers and c-suite that I've engaged with. I've never once felt like people d…

Everywhere I've worked, come annual review time, everyone is supposed to emphasize what they did, not what the team did. "We're considering promoting you, not the team, so tell us what you did!" Same with interviews: You're not supposed to say "I was a key contributor of Team X that shipped Product Y." You're supposed to say "I shipped Product Y."

So you have this weird contradiction where you're expected to work as part of a team, but then measured on your own contributions in a vacuum. So if you take credit for the team's effort, you're the bad guy who gets rewarded, but if you admit it was a team effort and take credit only for your contributions, you're forgotten for not having enough impact.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#150

Post by roarcher »

rossdavidh wrote: post #24

"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.…

> org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword, whether it makes sense here or not

Oh lord, I have seen some nonsense built because some prospective investor wanted to see us "do something with AI" lest we be "left behind" somehow.

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