My comment seems to strike people with the wrong intention. I'm not making a negative judgement on politically astute developers. Being politically astute is a necessity in most high-tech places.

A politically astute developer can take an idea and build a movement around it, whether or not it is their own idea for career advancement. This struck me as one of those things.

I was a politically astute developer at one point, I built movements. But they were not intended for career advancement and thus had the backing of technical people more than non-technical people. Quite often I came across less technically strong, but more politically astute developers than I who were able to take weak ideas and sell them to non-technical people in decision making positions purely as a career advancement move.

So politically astute is a neutral term.