How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#191

Post by exodust » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 12:12 PM UTC

rafaelero wrote: post #119

exodust wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternate strategy is loyalty to "the business" rather than any particular person. When you're invested in the success of the business above all else, and you make that known, you'll carve out a position where you're valued. Not because you went on a "carving out your importance" mission, but because your energy goes into your work, and the details and care for the long term business objectives. Also... you can t…

This is a good strategy, imo. I was following it for almost a year and I was having a blast working in a startup. Then a new manager came along and started to dictate how things should be done without much input from the technical team. I kept fighting for what I thought was good for the product instead of aligning with him. In the end it was just too stressful (the manager was not only an idiot but also rude). I res…

It's a shame when resigning is the only way out. Before reaching that point, the usual strategies should be attempted:

  Picking your battles;
  Negotiate rather than fight;
  Be better at analytics and research than anyone else. So you have the data to measure or predict success about a particular feature or direction. 
  Armed with your data, you must carefully communicate findings without shaming others.

It's a fine line between fostering a positive work environment in the face of misguided decisions, and being condescending or derisive towards other team members. There is no silver bullet, but a touch of self-deprecating humour never hurt. If you advice isn't taken, you'll have a non-snarky receipt. Any email written with an irritated tone, will look twice as bad months later.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#192

Post by herval » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #176

herval wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big American corporations (and to lesser extent, other countries that try to mimic US corporate culture) operate in a particularly dysfunctional ways. There’s ample literature on it (moral mazes, bullshit jobs and five dysfunctions of a team are particularly good books on the topic). You’re lucky to not have been a victim of that system!

I have seen how some big european and asian companies operate and every dysfunction which you can point out in an american corp is usually way worse there. Plus there’s some additional ones due to local customs

Different dystopias, for sure. The average Japanese big corporation values work hours way more than the average American one, for instance. In my experience in Germany and Switzerland, the corporate moral maze is definitely not as bad as the American one. Pick your poison, I suppose

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#193

Post by lazyant » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 1:48 PM UTC

getnormality wrote: post #15

It seems like this post can be summarized as follows: 1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it. 2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future , and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it. I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add i…

'make your manager look good'

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#194

Post by sfn42 » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #142

getnormality wrote: post #15

It seems like this post can be summarized as follows: 1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it. 2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future , and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it. I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add i…

I lean towards telling your manager what they should want. Put issues that you identify as important on the table and draw attention to them. Explain why they're important. Make them benefit from your expertise by being proactive about this sort of thing. My experience is still fairly limited with this, but I do have some successes.

Strongly agree. Our expertise is why we are there, when I tell my managers that something is important, they listen.

We need this feature, but before we can build this feature we need to make some changes to one or a few parts of the system. Otherwise we will be building on a bad foundation and fixing the foundation will be much more challenging after we have built on it.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#195

Post by monkeyelite » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 3:27 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #188

monkeyelite wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spotting what comes next and knowing how to solve it faster This is such a strange mindset to me. Part of staff engineer is learning you don't need to solve tomorrow's problems. You solve it with the constraints you understand and leave room for expansion if needed. Why do we have the opposite belief organizationally? And why as a manager would you want your top workers to be speculating about things you might want…

It’s obviously way more nuanced than 2/3/5 lines of text on both sides but; It’s not about speculating vs achieving what I’ve assigned them. It’s an over simplified example but if an engineer has two tasks to be completed that are dependent, it’s poor engineering for task A have to be re-done for task B to work (imagine an API that has ambiguity in the definition of done). A good engineer thinks just a little bit far…

That makes sense. I guess seeing the full lifecycle is always how I think about software I work on. I can do a better job of communicating that’s what I’m doing and why the approach I’m using (of doing less) actually helps us to be able to make changes.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#196

Post by rcxdude » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #189

rcxdude wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it, pretty much. If you do your own thing and it works, then you'll come out well. If you do your own thing and it fails, you'll look bad, while if you do what yiu're asked you're going to be much safer. So if you go off-piste you should have some confidence it'll work.

> if you go off-piste you should have some confidence it’ll work Just remember that the definition of “working” is in the eyes of your manager. Assuming they’re competent and not pointy haired boss, then they might have different goals and priorities to you. I’d you end up diverging from them, even if what you did is technically good and a good fit for the project, you’ll probably have a bad time.

Yes, you do still need to solve a problem that is considered a problem and at least around the same level of importance of whatever you were supposed to be working on, preferably greater.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#197

Post by jcheng » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

ikiris wrote: post #141

jcheng wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's SO different. It doesn't guarantee that life is good, but politics plays a much smaller role, especially at the very small sizes. If you're objectively awesome, the chances of you being sidelined for political reasons is pretty low when there are like 10 people in the whole company. It's just obvious to everyone who is delivering value and who is not. Conversely, if you're mediocre, there's nowhere to hide. Or m…

> Conversely, if you're mediocre, there's nowhere to hide. This line alone makes me believe you've never worked at small companies. Small companies are where people who don't have better options go to coast either voluntarily, or involuntarily.

I’ve mostly worked at small startups in my 30 year career, and been fortunate to work mostly with excellent founders and teams. Certainly that experience colors my convictions, as your experience colors yours.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#198

Post by kaffekaka » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

MarkMarine wrote: post #174

Aurornis wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I’ve also been owned by VPs and directors that are much better at politics than I am. One surprising thing I learned when I became a mid/upper manager: It's very easy to spot lower level employees playing politics. Part of it is because most ICs or even 1st level EMs are overconfident in their ability to play politics. They commonly overestimate their own level of social/political intelligence relative to their…

I’m dumb about it. I don’t have a scheme, I don’t have a hidden agenda, I don’t have ulterior motives… I’ve got what I think is great engineering (divorced from what the customer or business wants in the short term) and I just diligently try to make that happen. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve always got the long term health of the system (and fairness to the workers next to me ) in mind. I say the same thi…

Working with naive people is such a relief. They never surprise you with some f-ed up shenanigans just to make themselves look good, and they are worth their weight in gold. I try to be naive myself as well. But reality is political in the end.

I do the politics I think are necessary, but otherwise stay in my bubbles of naive, trusting and kind people I have stumbled upon.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#199

Post by jcheng » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

crystal_revenge wrote: post #129

jcheng wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's SO different. It doesn't guarantee that life is good, but politics plays a much smaller role, especially at the very small sizes. If you're objectively awesome, the chances of you being sidelined for political reasons is pretty low when there are like 10 people in the whole company. It's just obvious to everyone who is delivering value and who is not. Conversely, if you're mediocre, there's nowhere to hide. Or m…

> but politics plays a much smaller role This does not align with my experience at small tech companies at all, and I've worked an many . But the flavor of the politics is very different. At a small company as an IC you will very likely be working directly with multiple C-levels, often providing important context between them. A senior IC will need to be reaching out pretty actively across teams to make sure things a…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree with all that and I think I was trying to say something similar with my last paragraph.

I’ve gotten along with _almost_ every person I’ve worked with, including some pretty challenging personalities. I’ve always done very well at my job duties and gone “above and beyond” regularly. The only times I felt that might not be nearly enough, was at the two large companies I’ve worked at. Someone several levels away from me, that I would never meet, would decide whether I got a promotion or a raise or a juicy new assignment based on a game of organizational telephone. Frankly, when I tried I did pretty well at that game, but it was the first time in my career that I was tempted to do something out of cynical self ambition or winning rewards for my team instead of just trying to do the right thing for the customer or the business.

That’s what I think of when I hear “politics” and why, by comparison, it felt to me like at a small enough scale it’s not a thing. But if politics means needing leadership to like and appreciate you, then yeah absolutely, that is true anywhere there’s even one level of hierarchy.

Re: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

#200

Post by Aztar » Sun, Oct 05, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

lazyant wrote: post #193

getnormality wrote: post #15

It seems like this post can be summarized as follows: 1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it. 2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future , and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it. I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add i…

'make your manager look good'

Make your manager's manager look good. Because only then you would be able to go up the food chain (assuming that is the goal. your manager may become your competitor/peer in this case).