Office politics is not optional: learn to play the game or you'll be its victim
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Politics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) is considered a dirty discipline but it is not so and is intrinsic to the life of any Social Animal and in particular to complex social structures like those setup by Homo Sapiens. Everybody needs to learn how to "play the game" albeit within whatever boundaries they choose to confine themselves to. It is human nature whether one be in a role of Engineer/Admin/Management/whatever that is at play here and cannot be wished away but needs to be faced. At the minimum one needs it to "protect" oneself from the games others play and which may lead one to be at the losing end.
Some relevant resources (in addition to the works of Jeffrey Pfeffer mentioned in the article);
1. The 4 Types of Organizational Politics - https://hbr.org/2017/04/the-4-types-of-organizational-politi...
2. The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work by Peter Block.
3. Management: A Political Activity by Ted Stephenson.
4. HBR's 10 must reads; 2-vol On Communication, 2-vol On Managing Yourself, 2-vol On Managing People.
1. Why We Do What We Do : Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci. - From Psychology angle.
2. The Evolution of Cooperation and The Complexity of Cooperation both by Robert Axelrod - From Game Theory angle.
If I had stayed in that office.... shudder.
To save you time, here are the 7 rules:
1. Get out of your own way.
2. Break the rules.
3. Appear powerful.
4. Build a powerful brand.
5. Network relentlessly.
6. Use your power.
7. Success excuses almost everything you may have done to acquire power.
"Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed.
So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about."
As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.
The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. In those places, people are simply not allowed to not care about success or they'll get washed out because of low promotion velocity.
There are often team members that are at terminal levels, not interested in promotion, but doing well relative to their level standard (i.e. performing at or near the next levels). Those team members often won't be happy with a "meets" rating and still expect a rating and bonus multiplier above "meets."
Meanwhile, had they been promoted, they'd probably be a solid "meets" and another team member that wants/deserve a promotion needs those above-meets ratings too.
Ratings distributions usually aren't bound to just one single level, nor are they done with all levels as a single bucket, but within certain level groups, having a terminal level + rating distribution shaping is an issue.
no "official" up-or-out in any of those, but definitely a thing in all of them. at a mid-to-senior level or above you're getting paid -- not FAANG pay, but in most cases pretty solid -- and you need to justify your existence. If you're not getting "atta-boys" on the regular then you're gonna get chopped.
One place fired all of the Architects, for example, because they felt they didn't really do much. Three quarters of "what does this team do to deliver" and they were gone.
But some orgs may be fine with terminal MI (~CME) L4s.
Given that L3 is basically entry-level at Google, it also suggests that they aren't doing much up-or-out anymore. Basically you only have to get promoted once?
Presumably, you would get bad reviews because you weren't doing the things for that level (it wasn't clear to me if you would be told that you were going to be evaluated at that level), and then you'd get on a 'performance improvement plan' and then likely terminated.
Thankfully, I wasn't a manager for long, and didn't have to see that happen.
> The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures.
If given a choice between "up or out" and "up" is not what one wants to do (for whatever reasons), then "out" is the only path which might lead to happiness, as "here" is not an option allowed.
Completely true. Not for all of them, but at least one.
> ... people are simply not allowed to not care about success or they'll get washed out because of low promotion velocity.
And you state:
> Simply untrue. FAANG would be _very_ happy to not have to promote.
So how is what I wrote; "Simply untrue"? Or did you mean to reply to the GP and not me?
I’m not sure why you came up with this statement, I’d love an explanation. Certainly people are apathetic about many things at FAANG, but they are rarely apathetic about their own career. No one is particularly happy about “coasters” (people who may or may not be coasting but aren’t playing “the game”) who are quite frankly singled out for victimization and almost everyone would rather that they quit.
- "No one is particularly happy about “coasters”" - your word, your assertion
- quite frankly singled out for victimization and almost everyone would rather that they quit: I could see it, heard horror stories about Amazon, Google had great work/life balance. It absolutely was not expected you were busting ass for promo. Infamously you'd usually get a better grade by doing less. It was a "don't like tryhards" culture.
You're doing it wrong. This is about politics, not happiness. If you aren't moving up, then you're a loser like the rest of us. Have to climb for power and money.
Perhaps I am, perhaps not. It depends on what one values I suppose.
> This is about politics, not happiness. If you aren't moving up, then you're a loser like the rest of us. Have to climb for power and money.
"Power and money" are antithetical to happiness. Ultimately, one can choose to pursue the former, the latter, or neither, but not both. Which is "better" is of course subjective and the subject of much thought by philosophers for millennia.
Choose wisely.
See Peter Principle, etc...
He (IC5) clearly was not interested. He was happy with the pay and did not want all the other BS/Responsibilities that comes with Staff.
But yes, I wrote a scifi novel about a computer hacker and occasionally post it here. Calling me a "shill" for trying to promote my book seems harsh.
Have you ever tried to accomplish anything in your life? How would you suggest a new author gets their work outlet there?
EDIT: not you personally,sorry.
In any case, I sit in promo discussions all the time and self-promoting behavior has the unintended effect of driving greater scrutiny.
> As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.
Agreed. I think it's also a false dichotomy that you either have to "play the game" or "not play the game"; as most things, how much you want to "play the game" is a spectrum, and there's definitely merit in picking your battles. I ultimately don't care enough about most technical decisions in the products I've worked on to try to outmaneuver someone else who's trying to play politics, but if someone is actively politicking to try to affect _me_ specifically rather than the product, I'm not likely to stand by and let it happen rather than try to influence things. It's useful to be able to understand how office politics work from defensive perspective even if you don't plan to actively utilize it.
So, if you don't want to play it's still better to know the rules.
I feel like you can still gain a lot of respect by loving to code. For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits. You'll have your name in documentation. A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring. That in itself all earns you valuable respect.
Perhaps it's not the same as making sure the CEO knows that you made this piece of software, and did this thing, and that thing... but it does make its way there in a healthy organization.
Or… you’re a busy body that likes to move files around and pretty things up leaving your name on the blame and making it look like you did a ton of work. All you did was open it/save it in VIM.
Let’s not praise false indicators. Lines of code isn’t a good measurement of quality, nor is lines committed.
Don’t assume you know someone’s motives.
Of course, if your organization considers a firm handshake and constant eye contact more important than being a competent engineer, so be it.
None of these things garner respect, as respect is earned from people.
> A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring.
That is where respect resides.
> That in itself all earns you valuable respect.
How one interacts with, helps, and/or mentors people is what alone earns "valuable respect." An informal conversation with someone wanting to learn, resulting in a book recommendation, is far more impactful than a few commits.
My last job, I was out of the office the vast majority of the time. I was working 50-60 hour weeks.
There wasnt enough time to sell myself to my boss. I did work out of the office with sales guys and the ceo quite often so I did sell to them. They loved me.
I would get back into the office and it was like everyone was caught up in a battle with each other. I tried my best to stay out of it, but you get drawn into that shit so quickly.
Specifically, there was a senior sysadmin who knew nothing about networking at war with the network admin. I was the only other network admin, so naturally I get drawn into it. So I would help out there to help him avoid that conflict. Then on multiple occasions I did the network work, but the other network admin thought the sysadmin did and started saying how bad of a job he did. But it was me...
Then the dreadful day where I was booked 4-6 weeks in advanced and there was work needed to be done. So they brought this other network admin in on my clients. Totally fine with me to have less on my plate. But then I get a phone call from my client telling me the network admin badmouthed me the entire time he was there. I got that recorded, provided it to HR. HR then said they cant just fire him because then I'd be the last network admin and im overloaded with work. They then let me in on something I shouldn't know. He also has another fireable offence being hateful toward a lesbian peer. She was awesome, no idea why he had a fued with her.
So I left the harassment complaint with HR. But like 3 days later my boss who rarely speaks with me comes into my office to tell me that the other network admin went through my tickets and found many problems. I stopped him there, i told him that that other network admin is harassing me, that i'm making it official now and he has to do something about it.
The next morning I got fired.
Did your manager like the other guy more? Also why does it matter that the peer was a lesbian?
the other guy never got fired. He about a month later found a new job and they were left with 40 sysadmins and 0 net admins.
As for my firing's reason, "No longer need my services"
>Did your manager like the other guy more?
No, not at all lol. Said boss had gone off on him multiple times, even knew he was looking for a new job.
But that's the thing with harassment, you really don't know what's true and what people think of you. Having been tainted by the harasser illegitimately.
So for all I know I was the worsest person on earth?
>Also why does it matter that the peer was a lesbian?
Sorry, unmentioned part. He was pretty christian and straight up told her she's going to hell for being a lesbian. While also making her life hell in terms of getting work done.
Especially the part about not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind.
I was the worker who kept their head down, did good work and built good networks with people around me early on in my career. I got a lot of feedback through 1:1 discussions that said "You do great work and particular people know that, but other people with influence don't".
You don't need to be a dick and push others around to show your value, but speaking up, being supporting of others openly and contributing in other areas help show people who you are.
All of this needs to be wrapped up under leaders who support growth.
There's a basic level of self-promotion - demos, emails, talks to other engineers or users about how to use the new thing you made, retrospective write-ups of failed projects - below which you're not telling other people enough about what you did.
Rotten people gravitate towards power and most of those who aren't rotten are cowards who won't do anything to stop them because that'd risk their own careers or their own relationships with people naive enough to fall for the rotten people who are climbing towards the top. The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon.
Or you know, competition from new companies that will replace them. So companies can't rot too much, they have to continue to provide at least a bit of value or get replaced.
If one cannot get rid of power concentration (e.g. by subsistence or federation) then democracy's playbook seems best (voting, transparency, checks and balances) or even random selection.
We like to pretend it's different and meritocracy has more value, but the same rules of politics are involved (corporate vs government).
So, I disagree, deomcracy's playbook will yield the same results as the same actors are playing the game.
A very simple application of this is the worker's council/Betriebsrat (though this one too can get infected by politics depending on implementation).
It's certainly a highly non-trivial issue and details matter a lot...
On a personal level I've developed a sense for when someone tends toward these behaviors, like when they downplay the contribution of someone who actually did work while promoting their "direction" which happened outside of recorded history
When some individuals do try this BS, can you correct or eject them fast enough, or is it inevitable that they take over?
Does BS-ification always start bottom-up, top-down, or it varies?
Is there a point at which a company as an entity consciously chooses BS for its operations (such as because there's a superior net result, or non-BS is deemed intractable or is not understood)?
This doesn't stop the game from playing, but if you are founder/CEO you have more ability to shape.
And like the other commenter said, keep the company as small as possible. That way, each person's contribution is more prominent.
Won't this inevitably lead to the same familiar BS?
We already know that current tech workers start focusing on corporate BS metrics (e.g., FAANG interviews) while still in school.
Even getting into the college was its own gauntlet of BS of resource-intensive hoop-jumping, questionable metrics, artifice, and self-promotion.
CS students have already been told how to strategically pick their first job, how to work promotions, when to job-hop, to have no loyalty to project and team, to network, to self-promote, etc.
By the time tech workers hit their first job, they've practically been engineered and filtered to be corporate BS machines.
Part of the trick might be to un-train that. And to filter for people who can be un-trained.
And economists have been pulling theories out of their posteriors for a long time.
I think this is still barking up the same BS tree.
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
I'm in games development, and many years ago when I worked in a big studio we used to do these Friday afternoon meetings where people would stand up and show off the best work they did during the week.
The artists would show off a cool new character model, or a programmer might show how the pathfinder improved, or some nice new animation blending.
I'm sure some people hated it, but I think it was really great for the whole team to sit around and congratulate each other for what was achieved that week.
Even that can be so many different things. Measured how - title? Number of underlings? Number of committees? Money?
Getting the funnest projects
Getting reasonable flexibility in hours or days
Not being the garbage disposal, meaning you are allowed to work on important, not necessarily urgent things
Etc
These do require politics and reputation management. But much of it is being reliable and asking for what you want, but doing what you're given.
The rest, a non-negligible amount, comes from the active steps listed on GP.
Perhaps success for you is “known as important enough that I’m never on the layoff list”. And “get to spend time with my family; can avoid the death march programs”.
The best business advice I ever received came in a dream in which All Might (from My Hero Academia) told me: "If you want to succeed and get recognized at work, you must let your company know: 'I am here!'"
Imagine a video game where monkeys spend their lives climbing an imaginary rung, only to find that reaching the top rung is the same as falling from a middle rung - both are "game overs"
An alternative system is one where management is responsible for understanding the business value of the work and being ok with the outcome e.g. being ok with good metrics vs poor metrics both - whatever the outcome. It was the path they charted for some objective. They need to own the objectives.
It's not so much about not playing a BS game at all. Play it all because that makes the $$. But, it is very important to keep the BS in mind at all times.
I'm no longer a tech manager.
Depending on ones economic situation, not playing the political game could mean being on the street, losing your kids, etc. In that sense, it can be a privilege offered to those with the financial freedom. This doesn't mean in any way that you can't do it with integrity.
1. write all the code
2. Noone can fire you
3. Ignore all the politics and wait for everyone to quit and/or the company to lay everyone off. Nobody is left so now you're the manager ! Go get the next job
That's the true meaning behind politics being non-optional.
Not playing is simply, not playing. Apolitical is a position of apoliticalness, not politicalness. Attempts to change the meaning of these words is laughable.
Politics is just people, and people's perception of you. It's talking to folks to effect change, ideally a positive change. It's when you sit down with someone to review their code and suggest a different way. It's when you discuss someone's strengths with their boss so they can get better work. It's when you email someone to make sure they saw your merge request so you can get it done faster. It's literally the people side of a business, and knowing who to ask for what, how to ask, and so on.
When someone gets all Machiavelli with those relationships, making sure the right people know what they're working on, or trying to get inside information on upcoming projects, or etc, and then used that to their own advantage then we suddenly call it politics. But that's just shitty people playing politics primarily.
Work relationships and lines of power and communication are not optional. They exist. What you do with them does not determine if you are in a political game or not, it just determines how you play it.
TFA probably was read to say "You have to be Machiavellian". I think it's fair to say that's an over statement. But pretending or purporting to be antipolitical is an oxymoron. To whom are you pretending? A straightforward a-political style request or response must still define a relationship style.
This isn't obsession, it is observation of reality and understanding sociology in any group of humans (and other mammals).
> 1. write all the code
While this is personally gratifying, it designates a person as a "single point of failure", often expressed colloquially by management along the lines of "what if <person X> was hit by a bus?"
> 2. Noone can fire you
Everyone can be fired, no matter what value they provide to the organization, given enough pain experienced by stakeholders. Or politics.
> 3. Ignore all the politics and wait for everyone to quit and/or the company to lay everyone off. Nobody is left so now you're the manager ! Go get the next job
Me thinks I detect a slathering of sarcasm now. :-)
The politics, from the second I joined, were so over-the-top. It was like Wrestlemania. Everyone was smashing eachother and throwing elbows and it was like a spectator sport about who could club who first and the loudest.
I had just gotten out of a super toxic prior employer and had zero motivation to engage in corporate politics so I just decided to wait and watch and try to understand how to be effective.
I waited. And watched. And waited. And watched. And raised some ideas. All shot down. Finally I came to the realization that if I wanted to "play this game" I would need to get into the ring and start shutting people down, throwing elbows, telling other people their ideas suck etc.
After thinking about it a long time, I decided:
(a) I didn't want to do any of the above (b) I cared about building things good for customers (c) I hated the VPs involved and had nothing in common with them (d) I didn't want their jobs, because it would require doing what they were doing
I ended up leaving for a startup.
It was a very good company. I still think about if it was the right thing to do. But I was not growing, not getting to do anything, it was antithetical to my personal and career growth, I wasn't learning. It was just a wrestling ring with morons yelling at eachother and acting out their insecurities loudly.
I couldn't do it.
Contrast to prior employer: EVeryone was political, but in a sneaky, underhanded way. It was all covert assassination.
At a startup, there was no bullshit. It was: There is the work, do the work. The end.
No politics.
With remote work: Politics is even worse in my opinion. Remote workers are at a huge disadvantage.
> The politics, from the second I joined, were so over-the-top. It was like Wrestlemania. Everyone was smashing eachother and throwing elbows and it was like a spectator sport about who could club who first and the loudest.
This is phenomena I've seen played out in organizations which are flush with cash and want to hire "only the best", yet end up having multi-layered management building fiefdoms in order to affirm their importance.
Bored smart people will find a way to make their days feel important. If it is not in the work they do, then it will be the political fights they have.
There's probably less than 50 such places, total, on Earth, where every single engineering position is occupied by a bonafide, legitimate, super-genius. It's a small enough group that the posers can be immediately identified.
What are these places?
Outside of a research lab, even if you had infinite money and hiring power, would you even want to staff a company where "where every single engineering position is occupied by a bonafide, legitimate, super-genius"?
If you're doing engineering (as opposed to pure research) the reality is that there's always a lot of unexciting work. Your super-geniuses don't care to do that, what you need is people who are smart enough, but more importantly reliable and willing to keep showing up and doing the work even when there's zero chance it puts them on track for a Nobel price (or field equivalent).
Ignoring that for a moment (although we shouldn't, different fields are different), their jobs page lists an opening for a Web Programmer that pays 143k-159k range in NY (i.e. very little). I'm guessing this role doesn't require notable publications and they're not looking for a "bonafide, legitimate, super-genius" to fill this role.
(Or if they are, they will never ever fill the role with that salary. They'd be fools to try and I assume they are not fools.)
That was my point. Companies will hire top talent for the revenue-leading roles but quite rationally don't need to do that for every single engineering role (as OP claimed) because there are plenty of jobs where a trustworthy responsible adult who gets the job done is exactly what they need, even if they don't have a Turing Award.
The ones that try and claim it but have salary caps 100% cannot claim it. You cannot have leveled pay bands (IC3-IC8) and claim the best. You also cannot have percentile based pay vs the market and claim the best, you have to pay at 99% percentile.
I think there's a flipside to the argument too. If "good work" isn't enough, it means that those responsible for managing the employees doing "good work" aren't paying enough attention and that creates the need to self-advertise for promotion, as the article describes. But if there's an attention vacuum is it not also possible to hide, to some extent: as long as you continue to do good enough work to stay off the "bad" radar, then fit whatever you want into the spaces in between: Alternative productivity.
I have a current theory about the application of KPIs and OKRs for measuring performance: they're to take the responsibility of actually managing people off the managers who are meant to be managing people; Outsourcing the management, oddly, to the managed.
I'm currently three months through an experiment to see what happens when the vanilla "standard" OKRs I've been given aren't added to, ticked off or reached, or really measured against at all. I feel that I do good work, but I don't feel the need to prove it beyond the doing of it.
I understand the extensive overheads for things like backups and disaster recovery. I don't understand per-employee administrative overhead to measure contributions to "delighting the Customer" (actual example).
If I don't get a pay rise, or worse, as a result of this experiment, then it's been a success in helping to make an important decision.
I once read a book that management is purely about surveillance. They are purely there to watch you. Narcissists, as a personality trait, are people watchers who like control. So basically you end up creating a class of people who are almost guaranteed to be narcissistic in nature.
Corporations are veritable laboratories of mind control, psychology and propaganda. It is really quite complex and weird about how it actually works. It is otherwise totally illogical.
Where it really stirs up the concepts into a fine mud is that, in order to be able to make decent decisions, you need to know both business direction from above as well as decision / direction practicality from below, and the more that management becomes removed from on-going engagement with below (eg. outsourcing performance monitoring, lack of involvement in SCRUM) the further their decisions are removed from understanding the practicality.
Surveillance, as the terminology used, is loaded to create fear, which probably serves the needs of bad managers. Good managers should be engaging with their reports to know what they're working on, and to know them psychologically, so they know to ask more probing questions if someone is hiding an issue for fear of upsetting "the boss". Good managers know up the ladder and down the ladder and should be constantly working on finding the balance between each in order to maximise both the productivity of their reports and the progress made in business directions.
One of the reports I had (albeit briefly) was very emotionally attached to his work, and took it personally even when there were requests to make changes to fit it into changing requirements. I love the guy, but he needed fairly regular vent-sessions to talk him through, and out of, the (unnecessary) emotional state in order to reach "oh, this is what I'm paid for".
(funny story: I once got so exasperated with him that I called him my son's name - man that was embarassing for both of us).
When people ask what L1 managers do and why are they necessary, this is the thing that hits the hardest. ICs don't understand that there are 1000s of issues like this that need "managing" to get productivity out. It is exhausting and most managers I assume don't want to have to do this, but it's required.
I prefer small companies.
No I don’t have a solution.
I can never be a professional basketball player because I wasn’t born with the right genetics for it. Some neurodivergent traits might make jobs in management or public communication difficult or impossible, but they could be a boost for other kinds of work like programming and research.
From the point of view of a neuro divergent person, it's a corruption of the system by "the other group".
One interpretation is as per the title "play the game or be the victim", my interpretation is "the only way to win is not to play". Office politics only escalates the higher you get.
As completely as I can commit to anything, I believe that any time spent on office politics is time better spent on almost anything else. Those who seek money, power, and influence may disagree to their hearts content, but I've experienced enough, personally and vicariously, to know that their opinions are from a universe I do not, and can not happily, inhabit.
The caveat to the above is that I'm in a position where I can provide for my family without feeling like I vitally need to sacrific any amount of who I am in order to give them "more". All needs and probably more than enough wants are met. Maintain the balance...
Knowing how to navigate conflict is essential to any relationship including professional one. In addition knowing how to well communicate (e.g., sell) your ideas (or youself) is also needed.
I get there’s toxic individuals to take this to a dark place as they would anything. But at its core I don’t see anything inherently evil about it, perhaps just that it can make manipulative people become more public.
Anyone slightly higher in the hierarchy can have an effect.
The best way to not have to deal with backstabbing and conniving is just to work with people who are in it for the long term and where that behavior does not pay off.
Somewhere between blue and white, or something else?
Mind, he was likely autistic, carrying many of the signs. Not very relevant, but perhaps a good reminder.
I say under 40 cause after 40 you start to care less about what others think annd are much more comfortable in your skin ..that goes with others too in the same demographics.
Thus if you are working with more ppl who are insecure (younger person thing) worrying too much /trying to out do each other due to insecurities then that's a dysfunctional environment and describes the demographic at most FANNG company's compared to government.
In the cases I was referring to, particular events were described to me which, if true, would be extremely dysfunctional in a workplace by any reasonable criterion. In some of the cases, I personally observed such events on visits to the workplaces in question.
After this realization, it took me a decade to see that office politics exist because you are literally trying to steer the company, and so are other people, and you will disagree. I guess I haven't been fucked hard enough yet, because I enjoy this process. Some people call it a game, but I think it is just reality: if you want to do big things, you need an entirely new set of problem solving skills.
40 year old me would have scoffed at 58 year old me as a sellout, but here I am, enjoying it far more than debugging C code for a paycheck. I only debug my own C code now, and layout my stereo amplifiers circuits, even if they suck, because it doesn't impact my paycheck!
$0.01 - Don't overachieve other peoples' work, keep boundaries. I'm an overachiever, but I found that when people around me start to miss things I would do their work. Two levels above me are blind to who does the work, they just want it done. If I'm getting others' work done people will expect me to keep doing it. While this might jeopardize the product if I stop doing it, it is important to not be the one that cleans up everyone's messes because it will kill your soul and the mess never really gets cleaned up. Sometimes things need to break and be visible at the top level for change to happen. This becomes more important as you start to manage more products at higher levels.
$0.01 - Define requirements and deliverables exquisitely, since you can't solve all of your problems just by putting in more time. When I was a dev, I could pull an 80 hour week and finish something. But now I depend on 150+ engineers, and I cannot simply work more hours to fix things. Make your peace with that, and instead work on having very clear requirements. The more effort you put into clearly defining what you need, the more you can feel at ease with letting go and letting people do their thing.
Bonus: don't be afraid to say "no". You gotta protect your sanity. If someone wants to blow past you and win all the gold medals, let 'em. There are always going to be people that will work 200%, I'm just not willing to sacrifice what's left of my life. I'm by no means a slacker, but there is ALWAYS 300x more work to be done no matter how efficient you and your teams are.
Hope that helps? Good luck!
It needs to be enough that your boss/boss' boss can recall a positive association between you/your work and what they care about. Some of this is your manager/boss' job, but at least try to make it easier for them to do.
This is also a decent self sanity check on figuring out if what you're doing is important to do (with regard to the business, etc)
I believe it boils down to scarcity and the seemingly odd human attraction to drama. Even in the US, where there's plenty of wealth, life can still be darwinian.
Pessimism aside, there are definitely opportunities out there without these qualities.
1. Always make your manager looks good
2. Do not make disagreements personal, you may win this round but make an enemy for life
There's various systems of 360 review, but they seem to silently boil out into a discussion between manager and employee. To actually combat "the game", we need both a real attempt at direct & honest assessment first, and we need to radiate out the findings, share awareness & impact second. As we do it, the structure of the org is still implicit, game-bases: we need to make it clear what these witnesses & testimonies have sussed, share our understanding of things are seem now.
Actual decision making power needs to be vested in people based on the results. These reviews to serve the corporate need to assess never seem to come around & reify the findings: they're left a mystery to employees and power remains a structureless tyranny, to forever be interpreted by game players as they may.
Down with the game players. Do good shit instead. (Empower interesting people, even if they don't play the game.)
Management is always dysfunctional. Good management is less so when compared to the average.
All the "players" I know are on medication, period. I suspect cancer is following (just my view I have no source). So thanks but no thanks.
For me the next benchmark after perceived happiness is wether or not you're on medication (with rare exceptions). It you're on medication (rare exceptions apply), you can be driving the most beautiful of cars, your life is shit. Rare exceptions apply like you're working on something great or you have inherited your condition. You get the idea.
You think your job and you politics and your thoughts are not responsible for your condition? You think it's the cat? You havent read the manual.
Thats why they all on medication in offices. They are toxic to each other, they get sick. It's just that sometimes the person go from toxic parent to office and never realize whats causing the disease.
Let me tell you a mistake you're making. If I present you with a liquid in a jar that smells toxic, you're saying "we havent proven this liquid is toxic". Even though your own nose is telling you it just might be.
Same thing with toxic office politics.
Fast forward a few weeks - she was put on a leave and returned in a position 2 levels above what she used to have, working directly under a C-officer of the company.
That being said, if I were looking for a career in management I'd rather be female. In most of the workplaces I've been they've got a decided advantage at promotion after controlling for motivation and political savvy; and around a third of the girls in my university year moved in to senior management positions.
This is never consistently true, certainly not in large organizations where quality of personnel can be very variable.
This is true for one simple reason: Promotions are not weighed by an impartial algorithm, chosen by sorting, and doled out on a set schedule. They are submitted for consideration and approved by the powerful, when they feel like it, for whatever reasons they feel like.
The further up the hierarchy you go, the less exceptional people are. It's called the Peter Principle. Even if you used to be exceptional at your job, a promotion gives you a different job. And technical skill has almost nothing to do with ability to get promoted.
The only reason women might be promoted more is they're working twice as hard as the men. I'm sure if you asked them, they would rather have been men, when it comes to getting promotions. The bar would be a lot lower.
I don't see how you arrive at that description. Usefulness is a form of merit -- a very useful one.
> women might be promoted more [if] they're working twice s as hard
Doesn't this contradict your first assertion?
Isnt there some kind of glass ceiling for women and they get paid less compared to men?
Women get paid the same as men for the exact same job with the same performance. The studies that show the opposite are taking the pay for all women and dividing it by pay by all men (summarizing).
I grew tired of seeing groups which excluded me, so I joined some Irish and Scottish business networks. They are very small, and concentrate not on diaspora but on homegrown businesses in weird and disparate industries.
At least as a Catholic, I have been able to join ministries, retreats and service organizations for men.