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Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

> too many people that believe the workplace is a political place.

I heard a kid ask what politics was all about. It's an interesting question for anyone to stop and think about.

Everyone will come up with their own conclusions, but I personally would ask what in a workplace is _not_ political ?

From hiring practices, environmental impact, customer/community management (minorities, disabled people, freedom of speech etc.), social mission, where the funds come from, where the lobbying money goes...your argument could be that employee should ignore everything a company does except what they are explicitly ordered to care about, but that doesn't look like what we socially expect from employees and people will be personally affected by how their company behaves as a whole.

I'm not arguing for extreme activism everywhere you work, but saying the workplace is free of politics goes way too far on the other extreme.

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Obviously “politics” is anything different than the status quo.

But you are right. Everything is politics when it comes down to it, the only difference is whether something is considered a norm or not.

> From hiring practices … [to] where the lobbying money goes.… What in a workplace is _not_ political?

These are all great examples of "not your job" precisely because the people responsible for these concerns are the owners, and by extension the board, and by even further extension the "officers" appointed to concern themselves with these issues.

To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate.

No matter how good their intentions, they're not going to be effective because they're not charged with those duties and so they rarely have the tools and authority to implement the changes they might be advocating. That lack of agency leads to frustration and discontent, and it distracts those looking to you for direction.

What is _not_ political as a tech lead? Making sure tickets are scoped well. Identifying poorly tested parts of the codebase. Anticipating future requirements and designing systems that will accomodate them. Setting expectations and ensuring that your team meets them, such as good commentary, an appropriate level of testing, or the quality of code reviews given amongst your team.

Of course, you need to be a good leader to accomplish those things, and there's a political aspect to good leadership, but those duties don't have much to do with, say, the environmental impact of the company.

To be clear, I'm not saying any of the causes you brought up aren't important, but I do feel like a lot of people have taken up those causes in venues where they're personally unlikely to be very effective (and content).

> To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate.

It's trickier than that I think.

Imagine for instance as a tech lead you realize the resumes of some specific minority all get shutdown by HR before interviewing. As a tech lead you make a polite inquiry, and they tell you nothing's wrong, they have their reasons they can't tell you, and you should mind your business.

You could argue any move from there could be out of your mandate...but as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team. And hiring the best people fits into these optics. So you'd talk with some colleages about how you think it makes your team worse you couldn't hire that specific person you pushed as a candidate. The discussion extends to hiring criteria in general. More people come to you to share ideas. And now you have a group chat about hiring ethics that makes the management uncomfortable.

> ... as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team.

This feels like a rationalization for a crusade.

This falls into the "write a memo" bucket. You notice a trend (like all applications by a specific minority get shut down). You document it by pulling a report. You identify the potential ramifications. Hit send. If it gets round filed and the trend continues, it's time to vote with your feet and explain why in your exit interview.

I think if you start bringing it up with your colleagues after you've been told "there are reasons and mind your business", and you encourage a conversation about the company's hiring criteria, and finally start an informal, unsanctioned working group on a matter you have no authority to change... You've definitely exceeded your mandate and distracted your colleagues.

It's only political because of the choice to build a faction and enter into a power struggle with HR vs. call attention to it so that those whose job it is to worry about it, can worry about it if they weren't aware of it.

> This falls into the "write a memo" bucket. You notice a trend (like all applications by a specific minority get shut down). You document it by pulling a report. You identify the potential ramifications. Hit send. If it gets round filed and the trend continues, it's time to vote with your feet and explain why in your exit interview.

Thing is, I don't think this attitude would apply to many other subjects.

For instance you notice your company has difficulty hiring so you talk to HR to give more visibility in tech conferences for instance. They drag their feet and don't want to bother, but you start looking around, discuss internaly and see the idea has traction and people are willing to volunteer to do it, so you come up with a realistic proposition for meetups on friday evenings. The plan is greenlit by your boss, you talk to your office manager, get the ball rolling, and 6 months later your company officially has a meetup event every month, and everyone's pretty happy you did it.

So where's the line between expanding company's hiring practices and expanding company's PR practices ?

My point is, at some level (I assume "tech lead" is not some grunt worker) you're supposed to interpret your mandate as broadly as it still makes sense from a practical point of view, and will be rewarded for moving things in the right direction.

Saying "getting the right people for the job in your team" should stop at the memo level doesn't fit my experience of what is expected from that kind of role.

Good points to ponder and a good conversation, thanks!

Interesting arguments.

On the other hand, perhaps I have been formatted by being in too many small/start-up companies, but my experience is that is no such thing as "not your job". You can entrust someone to do that job while you're working on something else, but if you realize that a tool or process is broken, you should probably do something about it.

There definitely is such a thing as "spending way too much company time on politics", though.

I don't disagree with you. Maybe a more nuanced way of putting it than "not my job" is to ask "what is my role to play here?" In a smaller company/start up, your role might well be to look for things that need doing and do them.

Fair enough.

Everything is also math, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or computation, or philosophy, or economics, or psychology.

It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself.

"Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.

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