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Don't avoid workplace politics

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Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#241

Post by kakacik »

languagehacker wrote: post #41

When Jeff Hodges gave a presentation of his "Notes on Distributed Systems for Youngbloods"[1] at Lookout Mobile Security back in like 2014 or 2015, he did this really interesting aside at the end that changed my perception of my job, and it was basically this. You don't get to avoid "politics" in software, because building is collaborative, and all collaboration is political. You'll only hurt yourself by avoiding lev…

Succeed in which way? Some empty career in some soulless company that doesn't care about you? Some miniscule extra cash on the account? Those are not proper life successes in any meaningful way.

Most of engineers are rather introverts with rich internal life and strong imagination. You can lose most of it and transform for more 'success' over time, but at great costs to yourself. I am not arguing against say better communication or organizational skills, we all benefit from it, but you can't avoid various form of highly functioning sociopaths once you climb above ground level. Those tend to drag weaker individuals down to their rabbit holes. That's the core of the 'politics' I've seen over past 20 years in all corporations I've worked for. Looking at people and measuring how good relationship is right now, how you can use them, how worthy they are. Forging alliances always doing such calculus in your mind, everything is a chess board, everybody is a chess figure.

Don't forget how you behave and think at work will end up permeating rest of your life, you are just you in all places. One example I see very consistently - folks promoted to more responsibility get over time much bigger egos, very few are immune to this and one has to realize it and actively fight it to avoid it.

Be a good human being, help others in need, be a properly good parent, husband, son/daughter, friend. For many folks high on organizational charts, in above metrics they failed in life while drowning in money of career. No thank you.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#242

Post by nosianu »

hamandcheese wrote: post #211
dilyevsky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s cool theory and all but in reality alice will get all the credit and no one will even remember bobs name. People are mostly wrapped up in their own thing and 2 months later at best they will remember one sentence and that it's somehow attached to alice. Get people doing the work on your team to present it if you want them to get credit or stop pretending you actually care about this

This might be my naïveté as an engineer but I've never seen a major technical accomplishment presented and thought "yeah, that manager did that"

That may be true for things you experienced yourself, but not for what you heard about others elsewhere. From researcher team leads to company owners, the names communicated and remembered are those at the top (even if the original communication mentions those doing the work, the journalists and everyone else will strip away those "details").

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#243

Post by Yizahi »

The real advice should be formulated like this - avoid office politic at all costs if you tend to take side of the humans/workers and strive for justice in any form or are advocating for recognition for worker's deeds and so on. Don't avoid office politics if you can and want to act like a mini-corporations, can be absolutely ruthless and can throw anyone under the bus if it results in the net positive value for your career.

If you tend to skew towards the first group, supporting underdogs and people abused by the company, then supporting them is morally right but net negative to your personal career. Only people who skew to the second category should really engage in office politics.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#244

Post by [deleted] »

dilyevsky wrote: post #57
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…

That’s cool theory and all but in reality alice will get all the credit and no one will even remember bobs name. People are mostly wrapped up in their own thing and 2 months later at best they will remember one sentence and that it's somehow attached to alice. Get people doing the work on your team to present it if you want them to get credit or stop pretending you actually care about this

[deleted]

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#245

Post by Nition »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #184
Nition wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Musashi quote reminds me of another relatively well-known quote from philosopher Eugene Gendlin: "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."

> What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. I think this is false in an interpersonal relationship context. Acknowledging something can make it worse. I often think about a scene from Friends , with the following setup: - Phoebe is visited, by surprise, by a character unknown to the audience. - We learn that he is her husband, that he is a gay figure skater, and that the marriage was proposed…

I agree the quote I posted isn't perfect. I think the last line in particular, although it sounds nice, seems focused on the physical world whereas of course there is an internal world as well.

I love your excellent example, as well as the counterexample below from nosianu. Thanks for commenting.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#246

Post by an_aparallel »

quickthrowman wrote: post #164
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 would guess that most (?) decisions involving salespeople and the c-suite are relationship based. My entire industry runs more or less on personal relationships (commercial construction). In my case, virtually all of the work I sell is to people that trust me to deliver because I have repeatedly done so in the past. Every time I get a new customer I aim to build a relationship and deliver the best possible product…

In same industry, our head of customer relations was asked recently, why did we award the job to x company? His reply hilatiously was: "i had lunch with him last, thats really how it works", made me chuckle. You must grease the wheels...always.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#247

Post by nedt »

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…

But of course that's only for things with positive outcomes. If it's negative Alice would start saying "we" and "I" and then come up with a solution that can again give Bob credit because of the positive outcome in fixing something.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#248

Post by ljosifov »

andrewflnr wrote: post #169
Nition wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Musashi quote reminds me of another relatively well-known quote from philosopher Eugene Gendlin: "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."

There's some interesting meta futility in that statement. It's true of course, as far as it goes. But no one avoids truth because they think it's a rational strategy. They do it because it avoids emotional pain[0]. This is a sort of hard truth about why people avoid hard truths. Telling a truth-avoidant person (which is most of us on at least a few topics) things like this will have very little impact. In fact they'v…

Yes - so telling hard truths is not for the benefit of the listener, it's for the benefit of the speaker mostly. That's a major point: if I see, but I don't tell, if I have private truths and public lies, it's one small victory for untruths. However much I think I'm not - I'm co-opted in the big lie machine. There is quite a lot of experience with this acquired during the totalitarian communist regimes that existed in eastern Europe <1990s. And a minor point is: the listener may switch off, but a minuscule part of the message may make it's way. May implant a tiny seed of doubt, admittedly very very unlikely. But it's not totally futile. Even if the speaker may decide the price to be paid is too high, for too little gain. (lots of the time)

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#249

Post by lupusreal »

johnfn wrote: post #138
obviouslynotme wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this is an article on how to perform technical politics in large organizations. Functional, intelligent, non-nepotistic leadership is the exception , not the rule. It has been this way for a long time, perhaps forever. Dilbert became one of the most circulated comics for good reason. This article is the third guy. Pretending that identifying stakeholders' needs, communicating the solutions, and delivering them…

> Functional, intelligent, non-nepotistic leadership is the exception The majority of marriages end in divorce. This doesn't mean that I should treat all prospective partners as someone I will eventually divorce. That is not healthy for me, the people I interact with, or my future.

Respectfully, what you should do is first make sure you don't live somewhere that recognizes common law marriage, then commit to that person without actually legally marrying her.

Re: Don't avoid workplace politics

#250

Post by lupusreal »

Maro wrote: post #207
johnfn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I kept getting burned, I might think about the types of people I get into relationships with, the type of things I'm learning while dating, and I might talk with friends to see how their relationships are going and see if I could be doing something different. I don't think I would start telling everyone in a relationship to prepare for divorce.

I've been divorced once. That in itself doesn't mean I go around telling people to not get married. But, it does mean that I forced [1] my 2nd wife to sign a pre-nuptual agreement, and I go around recommending others to do so as well. [1] she initially refused to sign it, I told her the wedding's off if she doesn't, so she did; she's still unhappy about this and hates me for a day whenever she's reminded of it; this…

Judges toss prenups all the time. You best keep her happy.
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