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 leveling up in soft skills.
No matter how correct or elegant your code is or how good your idea is, if you haven't built the relationships or put consideration into the broader social dynamic, you're much less likely to succeed.
[1] https://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distrib...
I used to work for a software company that literally had "no politics" as part of its DNA. It was in the company handbook, it was in our values, people would say it when they talked about what it was like to work at the company. Hell, whilst I can't recall any specific instances, I guarantee that I said it and probably many times[0].
But, of course, it was never true. It might have felt true - certainly superficially - when we were a smaller company, but the reality is that it never was. We just didn't want to be grown up enough to admit that.
You can only really interface effectively with reality and make good decisions when you face up to that reality rather than living in denial. Or, as one of my favourite quotes (albeit that it's now a bit overused), from Miyamoto Musashi, puts it: “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.”
So that company maintained the "no politics" value for long years after it became apparent to anyone with a working brain that it wasn't true. Wasn't even close to true.
And that's poison: it bleeds into everything. Avoidance of the truth promotes avoidance elsewhere. Lack of openness, lack of accountability, perverse mythologies, bitterness, resentment, and a sort of gently corrosive low grade mendacity that eats away at everything. And all because we're lying to ourselves about "no politics".
So I agree: politics is unavoidable and, if we are to succeed, we must do so by becoming politicians, and admitting to both ourselves and to others that we're doing it, because success cannot be sustained without that, and we also can't help others to reach their full potential unless we are honest with ourselves and eachother.
[0] And certainly I'd say that I hated politics and wanted no part of it.
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 as one of convenience, allowing him to get a green card by marrying an American.
- We learn that Phoebe agreed to the marriage because she was in love with him and wished she could be his wife.
- The reason for his return is that he's realized he isn't gay, and he wants to get a divorce from Phoebe so that he can marry another woman.
Phoebe naturally finds this distressing. Eventually she agrees to the divorce, but just before handing over the paperwork, she asks him whether, if he had realized earlier, she could have been the one he married (for love).
And then she immediately interrupts to say "Never mind, I don't think there's any answer that would make me feel better."
I am interested in the idea that any answer to this question would make Phoebe feel worse. I agree with it. But it's not obvious why it should be the case that every possible resolution is a step down from no resolution. On an expected value basis it cannot be the case.
On the other hand, if it helps to let go - one of THE most important abilities a brain has - than that is a big potential benefit.
A long time ago but in a place not so far away, as a teenager with some love drama, I once was completely cured from a weeklong lost love hangover in a second when I realized I never had a chance to begin with. That was a very enlightening moment about how "love" works. My brain let go of the idea and that was that, I was free again with zero negative effects remaining.
While it cannot be controlled at will like moving an arm, attitude does have a big influence. You can make your brain move towards letting go. That's not covered by my anecdote where I discovered the effect by accident, that is something I realized over time. Avoidance or confrontation (of the problem) is, I think, neutral, it can work with either.
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.
I think you missed the point (or rather I read it differently). There WAS a resolution.
By her asking the question out loud to him, made this situation real (which she has probably practiced a million times in her head). At that very moment she self-realized the resolution she needed. He didn't have to answer because she found it herself. But only by him being there for her to ask the question was it possible.
She says she doesn't feel better, but the confrontation actually did and she can move on.
Well, do you think that if Duncan (the skater) thought about the question and got back to her with a yes or no answer, she wouldn't then feel worse?
I think that he is a different person now and the question is irrelevant that Phoebe very wisely figured out. The answer is useless, her realizing that is priceless.
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've probably already stopped listening.
[0] I was going to say "in the short term" but as someone suffering long-term emotional pain over facing relatively minor truths, well, I'm not sure that qualifier is appropriate.
One thing I read recently that has stuck (it seems obvious) is around hard truths that bring emotional pain.
These truths (whatever they may be) will come to you at random times, mostly when you're not wanting them which makes it even more difficult to deal with. So when they come to you naturally (and they will) , you try to push the thoughts away.
Better is to realize the truths and bring them up at your own time. Think about the hard truths that bring emotional pain when you have control over your personal environment. This way you may be better equipped to deal with it.
I don't want to assign any words or practices for this because there are many, but framing it this way helps.
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)
>People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."
I dont know about that, denial is a powerful force.
> as one of my favourite quotes (albeit that it's now a bit overused), from Miyamoto Musashi, puts it: “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.”
From https://www.way-of-the-samurai.com/miyamoto-musashi-quotes.h... :
> Musashi did not say this. This comes from a less than accurate “interpretation” of Musashi’s life and work by D. E. Tarver who repeats several fictions and myths about Musashi (hiding under bodies for 3 days at the battle of Sekigahara etc). He includes this line, “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie” in the final paragraph of the Fire Scroll introduction. No such Miyamoto Musashi quotes appear in the Japanese, nor in any of the credible English translations.
Thanks: that's interesting to know.
However, I don't know that it erodes the value of the quote which, taken in isolation, rings true. Even, of all things, a Batman movie[0], and Battlestar Galactica[1] (!) have managed to drop some remarkably profound truths on occasion which has made me relatively unfussy about where one can find truth.
At the same time I do like to give due credit so I'll be sure to reference the correct source in future. Thank you, once again.
[0] "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - seen this one play out first hand multiple times in corporate life, specifically in leadership.
[1] "You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore." - take heed, Mark Zuckerberg.
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This is a wildly antagonistic take.
It's apparent that the meaning of the quote is true to the parent commenter, regardless of whether or not the attribution is accurate.
The attribution being inaccurate does not rob the quote of it's meaning.
> I could have said the same thing.
But you didn't, and would never have, until you saw the quote for yourself. To claim otherwise is to lie, which you seem pretty passionately opposed to doing. Should I demand an apology from you, now?
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Yeah, all right, calm down Satan.
You’re probably going to get the moral and societal collapse you yearn for without the need for all this shouting.
No, what you said is what's called "pseudo-profound bullshit". Sounds deep; has no actual meaning--nor any specific relationship with truth at all.
Yup, these things are all a bit obvious, ofc the truth "is what it is", not very sure why that sentence is so special and probably why it had to be wrongly assigned to an old hero rather than to the random guy who actually produced it :D
What you're saying is that you're not fighting for the truth, but just for a better lie.
While I agree with the basis of your argument, I don't think anyone wants to agree with it.
Most people like to believe that they strive for getting as close to the truth as they possibly can.
To the practical subject at hand, I would argue that means that the attribution to Musashi is the actual lie, not the saying itself, although any saying regarding the qualities of truth may be called a lie.
For example, I call your statement that truth is fragile, unreachable, & invisible into question.
If the truth is indeed unreachable & invisible, then how could you possibly know if it is fragile?
It is fragile because it does not matter - a better lie will obfuscate it quickly.
Let's imagine a simple truth: vaccines are efficient, work well, are tested seriously, produced immense good for humanity for at least a hundred years. Well just find 3 random kids who got autism randomly after taking one and you have entire slices of the population rushing to the lie like flies to a turd, that vaccines are more harm than good. You can brandish the truth a million times, the lie is better.
Truth is fragile, people are seduced by lies, because lies are crafted, they're targeted, they're intelligently designed. They give you what you want, that God decides our fate in this particular case, and that medicine is evil for trying to change it (or whatever is the deeper reason antivax are so desperate for these lies, I really don't get it, I'm more attracted to pro-medicine arguments, even if they are lies themselves maybe). The truth is dumb, simple, inelegant, uninteresting and, quite powerless: we often don't even want to hear about it.
You need countless proofs to even observe the truth. You need nothing to observe a lie, you can fabricate all the proofs you want.
Give me a counter example ? I'm so annoyed at people telling me the Americans didn't go to the moon because a flag was waving suspiciously, I don't believe a truth ever took over a lie now.
I think the problem is that this is the core of most companies. A core lie that they tell the employees and sometimes even the customers - "we value you" - "we care about our employees" "we want to serve our shareholders" "we build community" "we try to ..." vision statement type stuff, almost always suborned to "I want the C suite to make the most money possible RIGHT NOW" or "You can never make me look bad even when I am an idiot".
Anything that violates those core precepts are rejected out of hand, and often times for things that would support the companies stated principles.
I have worked 20+ jobs in my life, and either petty bullshit or greed rules the top of the heap in all but the most particular circumstances. I cant even remember how many meetings I have setup with CEO's to hand feed them information and cheer them on like a toddler so they can make the obviously correct decision.
Reminds me of "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
[0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
>I used to work for a software company that literally had "no politics" as part of its DNA
I did too. It was something the CEO started saying after a particularly brutal game of thrones style purge.
I think a lot of times company values are simply "things the company did and perhaps still does for which it feels shame".
"No politics" is politics. It may even be the worst kind.
Companies are all about making money, and politics is one way to achieve that. Saying "no politics" is like asking employees to not care about money, it is not going to happen, and there is an implicit "but it doesn't apply to me".
Thanks for sharing, and a good example why for me all those values trainings are worthless, they are lies that get spread across meetings, placed on adversting material, told to junior employees, and hardly anyone follows them in practice, other than doing that yearly training to check a checklist.
This is a wild take. I think the point of the parent comment was that those "values" have to be honest to be worth anything, not that they shouldn't exist at all.
The question the parent commenter raises is more related to those trainings, which are 100% artificial and typical corporate checkbox ticking on the HR TODO list. Nobody disputed the value of giving an example by living and acting in certain ways.
I am approaching 50 years old, I never seen them being honest in first place during my half century, only marketing material.
I'm younger than you, and have definitely seen them be honest multiple times. So apparently experiences differ!
Was that a music streaming company by any chance?
But then, there might be two different kinds of politics:
One is a cordial game of soft power exchange, getting things done and everyone winning at the end of the day. No malicious intent, just day to day frustrations boiling over here & there. Tomorrow is another, we are friends again tomorrow & will succeed tomorrow. Forgiveness & forgetting is in good supply. Some amount of grace is allowed, no drawing blood. Help each other up when down (even if via manipulation).
The other kind of politics is basically a blood sport. Its a game of hard power exchange where people try to dominate and humiliate each other. There is almost no self-preservation, no care about tomorrow, no learning, no adapting - only the next way to slaughter you opponent, setting legal traps, messing with their personal lives. Zero grace. These kinds of games & people often do not care about the the goal, the company or product - they only care about winning at the blood sport and each interaction for them is a way to gather data, search for weak spots and so on. Its not enough to win, you have to humiliate and oppress another's spirit. Kick the person while they are down. Certain corps attracts a couple of these contestants and soon you have a full floor of psycho's playing a vicious game. For them it feels normal.
So its best to find groups/companies with good people that plays the gentle game (and keeping the bad apples out), that knows it is all made up & essentially role play, that doesn't crave blood. Its the only places where you can really succeed as a human. The other kind you only succeed at drawing blood and destroying others, while enjoying it.
I suspect that the people who enjoy the blood sport are disproportionately drawn to the kind of places that loudly proclaim "no politics" or "we're all equal" without having the proper defenses in place.
Or perhaps, more accurately, they're drawn to places without defenses: both those that are pretend egalitarian but have informal power hierarchies without accountability; as well as those that outright say "we're in it for the game", like the stereotypical high-pressure investment bank.
Politics begins as soon as there is more than one person involved. As much as I want to avoid it, I just can’t. And if I have to do it anyway, I might just as well give it my best shot.
Smalltalk and professional exchange aren't politics, the author is conflating the too.
When people say "no politics" they mean have a position on certain issues that mostly are off topic in a business environment.
For example if I have my group where nobody is religeous. You could rant about how stupid religeous people are because nobody would feel particularly attacked and some would nod along. Disregarding that the pittyful self-revelation from pointing at others calling them stupid, this is a political stance.
But we employ people from all over the world and viewpoints change. Some don't have the most dense main stream belief you find everywhere. You don't go into the next office and pronounce how atheism is the best thing. That is meant with "no politics". It is a requirement for multi-cultural exchange without immediate conflict. It is of course not restricted to religion.
The auther misunderstood what politics means. What he describes is office and relationship dynamics. There is quite a bit of overlap, especially when it comes to signal your viewpoints and perspectives in the hope to get recognition. I would be careful about that in a professional environment though. Depends on the company and how many cultures meet each other in random watercooler talk.
You can convolute the terms here, but it just blurrs the precision of any statement.
That said, relationship dynamics or "power play" leads to an effect where the most competent people often aren't the most well liked people. That is unfortunate and not very new. But the problem cannot be adressed by "talking more about politics". On the contrary, it would make things much, much worse.
That's politics in the office, not office politics.
But you are right that the author is mixing things up: Office politics isn't collaboration as described in the article. Office politics refers to things like one-upmanship, taking credit for stuff, playing the blame game - making yourself look good and others look bad, to get raises or promotions. Or for a phrase used in the article, office politics is about becoming a scheming backstabber.
It doesn't have to be.
It can also be the opposite.
Making yourself indispensable. Being the one who shows up for people (not as in "comes in and does a lot of unpaid work", but as in "helps out when other people need it"). Giving people credit where credit is due, especially the unsung heroes.
If you are well-known around the office as the person who is honest, kind, and helpful, the next time someone else tries to take credit for your work, make you look bad, or otherwise stab you in the back, it's much less likely to work—and when that kind of thing fails, it invariably makes the person who tries it look much, much worse.
That's not politics, that's just being a good person/employee. Politics is when you try to look that way, no matter the cost.
Often times, doing the good stuff and building credit for that takes a long time and the right environment to identify and credit it.
Playing the politics game is much faster/easier and leads to quick results, because all you have to do is be visible as much as possible and manipulate a little bit here and there.
People aren't great at identifying the career manipulator and in the short term will give those guys the promotion/responsibility.
Which you have to do if you want to get ahead, no matter the quality of your work. Merit and competence are only weakly correlated with salary.
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.
What you wrote resonated with me, I think the same way and so, allow me the pushback. :) Does it have to be that way, a severance type of scenario where the work life is opposite of the "life" life ? I feel that it should, perhaps could, be different. Yeah, it depends on what you do for a living, your need for money and so on, but do people that win at career always lose at life ?
When has employment politics ever meant "leveling up in soft skills"?
Employment politics has always meant: brown nosing, throwing vulnerable people under the bus, posturing, taking credit for other people's contributions, blaming other people for your failures, and on and on.
Or to use the language of TFA, "iNfLUeNcE".
If that’s all you see, you probably need to level up your soft skills.
Certainly the things you’re talking about are real, and particularly severe in some environments, but there’s a lot of room to improve your influence without engaging in any of that.
> If that’s all you see, you probably need to level up your soft skills.
Not OP but I honestly don't see how this comment/tone is warranted in response to what they wrote.
You have yet to meet someone at a company you work for you who does one or more of the things I listed above to successfully advance their career?
Many do. More common the further up the ladder you get. But I’ve been able to gain enough influence to affect most of the things I care about without engaging in that, unless you consider being friendly and supportive (something that did not come remotely naturally to me) to be brown-nosing.
If you want to significantly influence a lot of high-level strategic decision-making at very large companies, then you do probably need to engage in nasty things like that. But most of us don’t work at that scope.
I don't think that's their point.
I think their point is that you can have influence without doing these things.
Then I was misunderstood as well.
As if anyone, myself included, would suggest that my listed items are the only way to influence your employer is a hilariously bad faith read.
I take issue with TFA framing the problem of people saying they hate "employment politics" as a you problem when I am of the opinion it is a leadership problem. Bad leaders fail to, or refuse to, see the things I listed as "bad politics".
Just take my supplements, bro. It'll fix your "soft skills", bro.
I think you were misunderstood as well, yes.
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 other party is saying "Politics!"
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.
> "Office politics" means getting work done, making business decisions, and/or advancing your career using means other than technical or domain expertise.
s/other than/in addition to/
That's the fundamental disagreement in this thread.
But nobody actually says that. I've not once heard anyone say politics in a positive term when it comes to the work environment.
I agree in principle, but this whole topic needs some definitions so we're all on the same terms. "Politics" can have several different meanings.
Isn't directing work also a form of politics?
I think that's a very valid take, actually.
This is frankly a very childish and Reddit-level take on the issue.
If you think HN is a bastion of "adultish takes", you're gonna have a bad time.
And what, you think those are technical skills?
My point is that framing "bad politics" as a problem with you, or your employees if you're an employer, is absurd.
"Bad politics" comes straight from the top.