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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

Competent people need to know the political basics, it's like defensive driving.

http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-...

http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-...

This is good stuff. Thanks for the links. I have seen many times and even done the withdraw and become cynical that they talk about. In my case I hated the entire company so it was a bigger issue.

I will say though that when companies lay off competent people one thing I see time and time again the competent people that survived (who probably are better at the politics) always abandon ship. Its very demoralizing watching the kick ass coder you work with go and Joe Slick that never checked in one line of code stay.

So its really not in a companies interest to get rid of those that can do their jobs well even if they are not wise on the politics.

One remedy for this in the software world would be to publish detailed credits for key employee names/roles associated with software releases, something that is done in the film industry where people care very much about where their name appears in the opening and closing credits.

Great teams are quite rare and short-lived. One specific version of a software product can be fantastic due to the short-lived team that designed and built that one release. You see this clearly with hardware, e.g. the 2012 version of device model XYZ earns a higher price in the resale market. It would be great if the teams building these positive exceptions could be recognized, as they scatter and reform across companies.

I'm sorry but the first one was 20 minutes of "the world is not fair. Some people think its fair but it's not" repeated for 20 minutes.

The second one was "You need to observe people's actions and understand why they do things" repeated for 20 minutes.

Those are both very helpful points but I think people would be better served with some advice or techniques.

For example: Discuss your plans with each person one by one before a big meeting so that everyone will be more likely to see it your way in the big meeting.

One challenge is that naturally talented people often don't understand why the facts are insufficient. Others who are less talented often needed to develop political skills for survival. Agree that those links are basic (hence Politics 101), but convincing technical folk to care about this topic isn't easy.

One needs to understand offense in order to play defense. Here are some books with timeless techniques for those with ethical intentions:

1) Herb Cohen, You can Negotiate Anything (general)

2) Chris Malburg, How to Fire Your Boss (labor)

3) Robert P. Smith, Riches Among the Ruins (sales)

Re: big meetings. Herb Cohen points out that most meetings are the end of the negotiation, not the beginning :)

So the solution is to join the ranks of the lying ass-kissers? Who would be left to do any work?

That's not suggested in my post, the references or most interpretations of the word "defensive".

You don't need to read that much. Most people on HN aren't going to be next Petur Balish, but if you want to protect your job what you should do is find the guy who is the best political player and make sure his job is secure only so long he has your technical expertise. Now it is in his interest to keep you around and your job is almost as safe as his is.

If you want to read more, get a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People, or 40 Laws of Power (depending on how evil you are okay with being).

In the comments sections someone also recommended this great talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_prager_in_search_for_the_man...

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