Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

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You know it seems obvious to you but I spend the last 10 years on the job knowing absolutely nothing about this. I'm a programmer and I have good social skills. As a trainer, talking in public comes naturally, as a team leader, I'm also quite good in conducting meetings and driving the team efforts.

But I have ZERO political skills, and I couldn't understand why.

Reading your comment is like finally getting the missing link. I never realized this was the basics of politics. I mean, I knew good politician did it, I saw them doing it among other things, but I could not comprehend it was the essence of it. No joking. Now I understand many things much better.

It may seems nothing to you, but you actually made my day.

And this is something that should be explained to more technical minded people, because otherwise, you can get very frustrated when you can't manage to influence things with good intentions in mind and a detrimental approach, while others seems to make it happen naturally.

Well, I guess now I have to practice a lot to get better at it. Seems a lot of work.

Agreed. Being political is a ton of work. I find doing what OP suggests, which amounts to silently taking responsibility for other people's feelings instead of openly communicating about them, to be taxing as hell. Putting on an emotional mask usually is.

Being "political" in this sense is a codependent behavior.

Instead of operating out of fear of others' reactions, I prefer to give people the space they need to feel their anger, embarrassment, etc. by checking in with them over how they feel & empathizing with them.

I'll also agree with OP that approaching people 1-on-1 about big changes is much easier than putting someone on the spot to be open about & own their emotions in front of a group of people. The group's likely been trained to "act professional" by hiding their emotions as opposed to being professional by producing quality work. Sadly, that's not the sort of culture typically found in a business.

The last engineer I worked with taught me a similar lesson after one of our last meetings: "You lost the moment you became emotional. Don't ever let people see your feelings in a meeting like that."

He was right about one thing: a group of "professionals" hates emotions. Go find a group of emotionally mature adults to work with & work on your own emotional maturity. Here are some hints for how to work on yourself that also acts as a list of mindsets to spot in others:

- nobody makes you feel anything - you have a choice how to respond emotionally to all thing, though the amount of time your brain gives you to spot the choice may be unnoticeably small - that spot can grow with practice (mindfulness meditation) - whatever you're feeling in the moment is ok...you're allowed to feel it - unpleasant feelings signal a fundamental human need going unmet...find the need & address/accommodate it - everyone's doing the best they can and always have been...if someone isn't doing the best they can, the real culprit is you not accepting someone - own your feelings...don't defend them, especially by blaming them on other people. - apply all of this to every single person, including the worst of people. - read "Nonviolent Communication" https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

There's some really valuable truths in what you said. It takes years to discover, learn and master that and many people never come close to achieving those skills.

This is the kind of thing you learn by hard knocks or by a really caring mentor.

That last one (reading "Nonviolent Communication"...several times in the span of a few months) directly led to the rest of the things.

It's easily the most important book I've ever read.

"Agreed. Being political is a ton of work"

Being political it's so much work that most people, in high places, in big organizations, barely do anything else.

> Being political it's so much work that most people, in high places, in big organizations, barely do anything else.

Time for disruption. Dear hackers: Find a way how one can automate at least large parts of this by a computer program. :-)

I suspect something I came up with a few days ago would address this. It's based on the concept in this video: nxhx.org/maximizing/

The guy in the video suggests companies collect users' reasons for using products/services & feelings around those reasons. Companies would then be able to choose which reasons to design for.

The thinking goes like this: Right now, companies use metrics based on how much things cost in terms of time/money/attention. Those are abstractions on top of our reasons, so if companies can create a system to directly measure our reasons, those more meaningful metrics will allow them to produce better products.

That idea doesn't get rid of the politics in companies...unless you remove the company from the equation when collecting user reasons.

My idea is to build a public blockchain-based system for collecting those reasons publicly & anonymously. If every company has a public user-generated set of reasons for using their product & whether or not the product is a good choice for fulfilling those reasons, the internal debate changes to which reasons should they choose to fulfill. Arguing over whether this or that change better fulfills this or that reason would be silly because testing the idea is the only thing that makes sense.

There'll still be politics around funding tests, among other things, because political people aren't just going to change how they act overnight, but I'm betting this system will give them far less to play with.

Or do what I do, express yourself like a human instead of a business machine, leave, go do the rejected right thing for a competitor, and send the product brochure to the people who cared more about their feelings than the work.

You have to be willing to do a lot of walking away, but the inevitable "you were right" has been satisfying so far.

Or I guess another way to say it is if you can, do, and if you can't, by all means, coddle. Just hope I don't end up across the table from you.

This is super passive aggressive, like a child saying "I'm leaving, you will miss me guys, you'll be sorry, you'll see I was right and I'll be the one laughting !".

Besides, this assumes people rejecting your idea are bad, while they are just being humans. Humans are weak unefficient creatures, it's no use to take offense in it, we all are weaks in some areas.

> Humans are weak unefficient creatures, it's no use to take offense in it, we all are weaks in some areas.

But it is correct to take offense about people in position who command about things they are weak in.

Or you could accept the situation for what it is: blind ignorance on the part of a leader. Then you can merrily do whatever's best for you without carrying around anger toward them.

Choosing to get offended is rarely a quick path to healthy productivity.

The highest-marginal-return skill to practice, in my experience, is to figure out where the mutual benefit in any arrangement is, and PRESENT THAT FIRST to each party involved. If it seems like things magically improve whenever you show up, most of the other issues go away.

Also, ensure that whatever you do makes your "superiors" look better, but make goddamned sure that it reflects their cleverness in choosing YOU for the job. If you're in academia and you write 99% of a grant that gets funded, put it on your CV. If you write a contract or a proposal that makes the company $5m, put it on your resume. Don't ever expect anyone to give you credit -- take it, and then thank whoever would logically be obligated to give it for their gracious acknowledgement. People seldom do what they know to be right -- they do what is convenient, then repent. So make it convenient for people to do the right thing for you.

Make it easy for people to appreciate your value and hard to fault your shortcomings. It goes a long, long way. If you can't do that, maybe look for a position where it will be easier for you to execute this task.

Good luck! You will be a happier person if you do this.

The problem with this approach is that it's tricky to take credit for when you get your way because you've done it so quietly. You have to have an organization and leadership that is wise enough to recognize what you've done.

you get the agreement quietly, such that when you speak publicly there is a general agreement on the statements you make in the group. hence you do get credit.

also note that if you (need to) push an idea, you shouldn't be the only one pushing it. You should prevent the idea becoming tied to you as person.

Some people will just disapprove the idea because of the fact that it comes from you (instead of judging it by its merits).

On the upside, you will not get blamed when your move turns out to be wrong :)

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