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Don't avoid workplace politics

terriblesoftware.org

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191–200 of 332 posts

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#191

Post by lmm »

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…

> Not playing is not an option, and being obstinate is a good way to get fired.

On the contrary, you can absolutely opt out of this stuff if your skills are valuable enough. Maybe you could get a bit more money or status by participating actively in corporate politics, but often the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#192

Post by firesteelrain »

roarcher wrote: post #150
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.

I am sure you could have came up with a legit use case for AI

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#193

Post by lmm »

circlefavshape wrote: post #97
garciasn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There are ALWAYS business reasons that cause technical projects to fail So it's always business folks' fault, and never the nerds' fault? My experience has been different (full disclosure - professional nerd for 30 years)

For the overwhelming majority of day-to-day, line-of-business software, the nerds are a commodity and the project succeeds or fails on how good or bad the business folks are. They should get the blame for the failures but also the credit for the successes.

For the stuff that is genuinely pushing the technical envelope, it's possible for the nerds to make the difference. In those cases you do see the projects fail for technical reasons like "the code couldn't scale to the required number of users" or "the technical functionality never worked reliably", and those kind of failures are the nerds' fault. But that's the minority of failures IME.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#194

Post by skirmish »

loeg wrote: post #181
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.…

C-suite only get credit for changes, so they are incentivized to make changes at random and hope some of them turn out to look good in hindsight.

As I heard once, in a large company VPs are rated by the number of reorgs they initiated per year. That explained so much insanity I have seen: a project gets moved to different directors, then after 5 reorgs ends up in its original place. Just large company things, VPs have to show "impact" where there is none.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#195

Post by jojobas »

citizenpaul wrote: post #46
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.…

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…

C-suite stands to gain or lose most as a result of these decisions (even if a lesser loss is perceived more acutely by an engineer). Short of bribery, it's their calls to make.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#196

Post by NoPicklez »

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…

You need to give credit where credit is due, if you are presenting someone else's work and they put in the majority of the work you must share that. Yes you may have been part of it and perhaps even reviewed it, but you must give them significant credit.

Nobody likes people who take credit for others work and it will be quickly found out. Particularly if the work gets critiqued and you are asked to stand by it.

This isn't some fancy law, but general decency.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#197

Post by supriyo-biswas »

paganel wrote: post #136

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…

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).

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#198

Post by tonyhart7 »

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.…

Yeah, this is ignore the fact that human is not taking all rational decision all the time

more often that not its based on feeling

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#199

Post by Joel_Mckay »

"The Rules for Rulers"

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-Po...

Both publications cover the politics of most firms with stakeholders. =3

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#200

Post by roarcher »

firesteelrain wrote: post #192
roarcher wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am sure you could have came up with a legit use case for AI

You come up with solutions to use cases. Inventing a use case to justify a solution is backwards and by definition not legitimate.
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