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Comment by ndriscoll | Hacker News Reader

> Stop pretending you’re above politics. You’re not. Nobody is. The only question is whether you’ll get good at it or keep losing to people who already are.

False. You do not lose if you do not play. You can offer your expertise/opinions and point out places where things could be improved, but at the end of the day, just treat work as someone paying for your time. If you've advised them on how to best make use of that time, and they want to do something else, well it's their money.

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it depends on whether you want to live life with work-as-someone-paying-for-your-time or whether you want to live life as work-as-perfecting-and-delivering-on-craft

you can have an attitude towards spending the short hours you have on this earth attempting to produce quality work that others appreciate and make their lives easier in some way, as opposed to writing those hours off as sold to someone else

And, indeed, perfection of the craft involves politics: it's not just understanding the technical space, it's about, eventually, understanding why other people see that space differently, what their goals are, how those goals overlap or don't, and how technical choices feed into that social layer.

Back in the day, Chrome was about a sandboxed subprocess architecture that made for a more stable browser. It was also about breaking the back of the Microsoft monopoly and advocating for why people should bother to care (remember the comic strip Google commissioned?). Nowadays, if it weren't about politics at all, Chrome would still be the best choice because it's still technically very good.

But there's more to the problem than simple technical competenece.

You can hone your skills while still maintaining a healthy detachment. You make your case at a thing, business decides to do something else that you think is dumb. You only "lose" if you were overly attached to the decision in the first place. Otherwise you simply get a chance to observe the outcome, see what went well/poorly, and reflect on whether/how you were totally right all along. Next time you have a clearer understanding and perhaps will be able to better articulate your position. You didn't lose. You gained experience and wisdom. You always win as long as you're open to do so. The business lost by listening to the wrong person.

I’ve heard it called both “killing the unchosen alternative” or “Professional Subordination”

https://www.manager-tools.com/forums/deceit-and-murdering-un...

Amazon’s LP is “Disagree and Commit”

If I need to dig into social engineering and extrovert masking to be an effective engineer I probably should also look for another job. I hate places where this borderline nepotism is the only way to get anything done.

Oh well, I'll just endure it until the job market relaxes a little.

Those hours are sold off to someone else to fund the stuff that matters in my life, where the financial RoI is negative.

I think this is saying the same thing as the author, with the possible exception that the author is operating under the assumption that curtailing one's career at a particular level is "losing." It isn't for everyone, and it's a perfectly rational decision to top out as a really good individual contributor or senior software engineer.

... but at some point in a corporate setting, the job becomes about people, not just technology, because all businesses end up being about people. Deciding not to address that sends a very heavy signal to anyone with authority to put a person in a position of high authority in a company that they don't want that authority. You can't just-write-really-good-code your way towards being CTO or senior VP of anything; eventually, you'll meet the challenge of "Someone else has another idea to do it, and maybe it's worse than yours or maybe it's equivalently good but optimizes along other axes than yours, and if your answer to them asserting we should all use their solution is 'I don't do politics' then the company will use the solution that was advocated for and better, worse, or indifferent, yours will be interpreted as under-supported and routed around."

> well it's their money.

And, indeed, for those of us who don't do politics, it always will be their money and not ours.

I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider a “senior engineer” as someone who dutifully just pulls tickets off the board and doesn’t have to lead major initiatives that involve dealing with other people.

If you are just pulling well defined tickets off the board, you are easily replaced, outsourced and it’s hard to stand out when looking for another job.

Then you shout “use your network”! That required being known, being liked and being remembered - politics.

> I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider a “senior engineer” as someone who dutifully just pulls tickets off the board and doesn’t have to lead major initiatives that involve dealing with other people.

In theory sure, but there are plenty of those in practice.

Since we're in HN: plenty of those who are YC startups too.

And due to politics, there is less and less space for engineers to interact with other teams and we need to put up a fight in order to participate on decisions.

I had criticism for Agile as much as anyone but the post-agile world is horrible.

From the recent batch of unimpressive YC startups I’ve seen, you give them way too much credit.

Take this one for instance that’s on the front page.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/liva-ai/jobs/6xM8JYU-f...

It looks like the standard two non technical founders looking to underpay a “founding engineer”.

And they want you to be comfortable working “Be comfortable working 12 hours a day 6 days a week”

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