Hacker News Reader

Comment by professorTuring | Hacker News Reader

I read it all. Mistakes were made due to inexperience. Lessons should have been learnt. Wiser should he be by now.

Being aware of enterprise politics and learning how to play them will give you the opportunity to really impact the business.

Never be the guy who says:

1. "nobody does this in the enterprise"

2. "we are doing all of this wrong"

3. "we need to start from the beginning"

4. "my manager is wrong"

Whispers and grabbing coffees with people are much better weapons than being the one that always brings the harsh truth into the meetings.

Beware: pointing fingers to a colleague or your manager to upper management is telling them that they are not making their job good enough, they are not noticing things, and since they tend not to fail and to notice everything, the failure must be you.

View on HN

> Whispers and grabbing coffees with people are much better weapons than being the one that always brings the harsh truth into the meetings.

There was a point where I was noticing that I was being less politically effective than I had previously been, and I realized that a good bit of that had to do with open office plans. Having these little intimate exchanges is much harder to pull off reliably.

>2 "we are doing all of this wrong"

I wouldn't put that so boldly, as I've done that many times and so far have had a relatively successful career as a consultant but also full timer (including manager). Admittedly, it made people very skeptical initially and made the first months less pleasurable, including ruffling feathers. Longer term, somehow that approach has been fairly rewarding.

However I'm sure there's a better way. I'm just the inherently direct type.

I agree with you, and I've done that approach, but it is really more painful and it only works if later on you are considered a Guru (by them, not by you), hard worker and a go-to guy who always helps. And it takes longer to work.

The subtle way is less painful and you begin with the right foot.

If you can enforce the change, eventually it's going to be better.

At some point you have to decide if the business deserves your effort, and if it were me I would've decided no and walked away long before this guy did.

to put it more succinctly: There are a lot of business I can help be successful, fuck spending my time doing it for this sort of culture.

> There are a lot of business I can help be successful, fuck spending my time doing it for this sort of culture.

That's a reasonable attitude to have. Broadly, it's much easier to get promoted by joining another company anyhow.

However. The higher up in the power structure you get the less able you will be to avoid politics if you want to be effective in your role. This is true, even in technical leadership.

And with just a tiny bit of effort in corporate politics your technical (or whatever you aim for) impact can become so much larger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com