And even if it was because the right people weren't in the room, that's still a leadership failure. Part of the job of those decision-makers is to get the right people into the room
With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics. Everything this article describes as "good politics" is definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building relationships? That's just meeting interesting coworkers. Understanding the real incentives? That's keeping the big picture in mind, a standard requirement for any engineer. Managing up effectively? A good manager will treat you like the expert that you are and that happens automatically. Creating win-win situations? That's that big picture thing again. Being visible? Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done?
I hate politics. I do all of those "good politics" things and I enjoy all of it. It might technically be "politics" but it's not what we think of when we say the word.
This article boils down to a semantic argument. They want to carve out a section of the job and put it under the label of "politics" when most of us would not put it there. That label may be right, it may be wrong, but I don't really care. It's just not an interesting argument. I think this article would be a lot better if it dropped the P word entirely and just explained why and how you should do the "good" things it lists.
> but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer [...] Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done?
Certainly many would prefer to just enter flow state and work on their craft, work the wood with the chisel (=do the engineering work), etc.
It is of course not a good strategy in reality, and it doesn't matter what people "want", but let's at least admit that plenty of people don't enjoy having to interact a lot. People-oriented vs thing-oriented.
I know that plenty of people don't like doing presentations and writeups and such, but just telling your coworkers about whatever cool thing you've done seems to be pretty much universally enjoyed in my experience.
With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics. Everything this article describes as "good politics" is definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building relationships? That's just meeting interesting coworkers. Understanding the real incentives? That's keeping the big picture in mind, a standard requirement for any engineer. Managing up effectively? A good manager will treat you like the expert that you are and that happens automatically. Creating win-win situations? That's that big picture thing again. Being visible? Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done?
I hate politics. I do all of those "good politics" things and I enjoy all of it. It might technically be "politics" but it's not what we think of when we say the word.
This article boils down to a semantic argument. They want to carve out a section of the job and put it under the label of "politics" when most of us would not put it there. That label may be right, it may be wrong, but I don't really care. It's just not an interesting argument. I think this article would be a lot better if it dropped the P word entirely and just explained why and how you should do the "good" things it lists.