I think this is largely practical advice if you want to influence a tech company at all costs. That is -- to have multiple projects lined for each executive goal that you can singlehandedly deliver on to thunderous applause.
That said, it's often easier said than done. We've all worked at places where projects were canceled 3 months in due to all sorts of reasons (e.g. security breach changes all priorities, nobody cares about your database change now).
So I do think there comes a point where an engineer asks themselves -- "How many projects do I have to prepare, how many stakeholders do I have to convince, how many wins do I need before I see tangible benefits commensurate with my investment?" What if I just let the executives set the course and provide my insight if asked, and still get 90% of the pay.
Ultimately this is a guide to work successfully within a dysfunctional system, but nonetheless great advice for that.
Man, I must not have worked at dysfunctional enough companies. I can't relate to the opening remarks in this article at all. I'm used to really open communication from the top down and, even when we build in a direction I disagree with, we've discussed things enough that I'm at least interested in seeing why someone else I consider intelligent sees the world so differently. Perhaps it has to do with only working for companies founded by engineers rather than product/marketing? I'm not really sure.
It seems like this post can be summarized as follows:
1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it.
2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future, and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it.
I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add is that managers and leadership are sometimes happy to be given something different than what they asked for, so long as it's still what they wanted at a higher level. This is risky, but success can be a fast track to respect and autonomy.
This is usually in big corps, so if you like working in these hellholes, then proceed with all these shenanigans. I worked there before and it's not really good for engineering, let alone engineers' mindset, because in addition to the actual technical stress, now you have to deal with all this bs from people who do nothing all day but these games. Small companies are the best for me, and I remember one time in a small company they hired a manager from a corp. In a year, he managed to fuck up everything, 4 engineers left including myself, and turned the work culture into rules and policies instead of adults working with each other towards a common goal.
> The important thing is to have a detailed, effective program of work ready to go for whatever the flavor of the month is.
This is basically my theory of how things get done in Washington. There's no grand plan most of the time, just an army of operatives ready with a slide deck to pitch when the conditions for an idea present themselves.
One of my favorite quotes: “ Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” - Milton Friedman
I’ve found writing 1 pagers and technical documents that I can circulate, and then re-reference when there is a crisis is the way to have my ideas floating around at the time. I’ve had some success driving the architecture I want iteratively, slowly progressing towards my goals by building consensus but I’ve also been owned by VPs and directors that are much better at politics than I am. Having the library of 1 pagers, sending them around so they are latently in the air, and waiting for the impetus to execute on that idea has been much more successful.
The biggest political capital that you can build up is your technical understanding & skills. But they are only useful insofar as you put them into the context of the broader company strategy. Giving appropriate advice, and delivering, in the interest of the company, will give you capital, i.e., people listening to you & relying on you, trusting you, which gives you power to steer. Preparing contingency plans & pitching then, then executing them, is the best way.
- Ship wins (as defined by generally acceptable metrics.)
- Have someone in management or a PM who is good at selling your wins
Even here, though, you will run into problems. There is always a new VP or leader looking to make an impact. Because you maintain the current systems your team is engaging in WrongThink and new VP has shiny new RightThink (AI, etc). As soon as your code hits prod you have “legacy” code.
New VP can make promises of future, theoretical riches that you can’t compete with, as you maintain the boring, current reality. Reality is not sexy or interesting. You’re in the old guard now.
A lot simply boils down to patronage. Making your higher up VP look successful and being in a position to move with them to their new company.
glad to see someone being real and not parroting infuriating "politics is just learning how to interact with other humans narrative" .
politics at work isn't any different than any other politics. Its not a spl breed of politics thats more pure and noble.
succeeding at workplace politics requires the same skills of identifying who to suck up to, who to eliminate and who can be trampled over to get where you want.
A lot of the frustration I typically hear in this camp is something like “well I shipped a huge refactor that cleaned up all the code, why does no one appreciate that?” One particular interaction that got me thinking was a few years ago listening to an acquaintance telling me how he spent months meticulously cleaning up the data pipeline and making it perfect, and how no one appreciated this work.
Like, as an engineer, I don’t doubt that this work is valuable. But you have to imagine what it must sound like from the perspective of a PM or EM. Itd be like my PM saying “I spent the last month organizing all eng docs to be properly formatted with bullet points.” You’d be like, uhh, okay, but how does that affect the rest of the company? More importantly, how does the PM distinguish engineers who are doing impactful work from the engineers who are doing the “bullet point formatting” work, of which surely some exist? From the perspective of a PM, these types of work can be hard to tell apart.
Really what you want to do is articulate what you plan to do, ahead of time, in a way that actually clicks for non-technical people. For instance, I was pushing unit tests and integration tests at my company for years but never found the political will to make them a priority. I tried and tried, but my manager just wouldn’t see it. Eventually, there was a really bad SEV, and I told her that tests would prevent this sort of thing from happening again. At that point the value became obvious. Now we have tests, and more importantly, everyone understands how valuable they are.
> The easiest way is to actively work to make a high-profile project successful. This is more or less what you ought to be doing anyway, just as part of your ordinary job
this involves you getting a chance to work on it in the first place. why would you in particular be getting to work on those projects?
you have to first align yourself with VP and become their bitch. someone who they can trust. you should always follow prison strategy of finding the biggest bully in the yard and becoming their bitch. only then you get to even sniff work thats important. don't even think that you will be given important projects if you show off your technical acumen and skills. that strategy usually backfires and puts a target on your back both from ur peers and superiors who now see you as a threat.
just remember ppl who got into managment positions have no technical skills anymore and are highly insecure of that fact. they will murder you if they even have a little bit of inkling that you are someone who is technically proficient that can drive projects with little help.
It is interesting to notice that when the goal is considered positive by a large enough percentage, the act is named "influence". Whereas when the goal is considered selfish and against the common good, the act is named "manipulation".
There is a career book that makes a lot of good but extreme points.
One of them is: technical ability is actively detrimental to your power and career. You have to spend time and energy on actually doing things, and every competent manager will do their best to keep you right where you are, with as little political influence as possible.
Conversely, as a manager, so the book says, you want to avoid actually doing anything. You should start initiatives -as many as you can- and deftly use your political capital to either own, disown, or weaponize them. Whether they succeed in creating value is irrelevant, certainly not something you should focus on.
People focused on success and value of initiatives are still working hard when you have moved on. These people are hopelessly behind the scheming manager, eating crumbs.
And if necessary, you the manager just claim credit retroactively.
I am sure these techniques are effective; but they're disingenious and self serving.
If I see a staff engineer consistently trying to latch onto company initiatives and strategy goals to get funding for their pet project, I would like to fire them
Why not try to actually solve the issues, and spend the politics budget on making sure people noticed? Even if you failed on the politics thing you've at least done something useful
I think ideas also need to mature in peoples minds.
That can take a long time.
And when the right timing comes, people might come back to your idea.
Of course that will not always work.
All great advice. But I wish I had spent more time asking myself whether I should spend my life eating crap and kissing someone’s butt in order to further someone else’s ambitions.
You can play the game, but ask yourself if that’s the game you want to be playing. I’m wary of people who seem happy to make themselves slaves to money no matter the human cost.
43 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 58.6 ms ] threadI don't think engineers are universality bad/good at politics. It's just like anything else, takes practice.
That said, it's often easier said than done. We've all worked at places where projects were canceled 3 months in due to all sorts of reasons (e.g. security breach changes all priorities, nobody cares about your database change now).
So I do think there comes a point where an engineer asks themselves -- "How many projects do I have to prepare, how many stakeholders do I have to convince, how many wins do I need before I see tangible benefits commensurate with my investment?" What if I just let the executives set the course and provide my insight if asked, and still get 90% of the pay.
Ultimately this is a guide to work successfully within a dysfunctional system, but nonetheless great advice for that.
1. If your manager has something in particular they want you to do, you should do it.
2. If your manager doesn't have something in particular they want you to do, you should figure out what they will want you to do in the future, and make any necessary preparations so that it will be doable when they want it.
I'd say it's good advice. The only thing I would add is that managers and leadership are sometimes happy to be given something different than what they asked for, so long as it's still what they wanted at a higher level. This is risky, but success can be a fast track to respect and autonomy.
This is basically my theory of how things get done in Washington. There's no grand plan most of the time, just an army of operatives ready with a slide deck to pitch when the conditions for an idea present themselves.
I’ve found writing 1 pagers and technical documents that I can circulate, and then re-reference when there is a crisis is the way to have my ideas floating around at the time. I’ve had some success driving the architecture I want iteratively, slowly progressing towards my goals by building consensus but I’ve also been owned by VPs and directors that are much better at politics than I am. Having the library of 1 pagers, sending them around so they are latently in the air, and waiting for the impetus to execute on that idea has been much more successful.
- Ship often to prod (don’t do theoretical work).
- Ship wins (as defined by generally acceptable metrics.)
- Have someone in management or a PM who is good at selling your wins
Even here, though, you will run into problems. There is always a new VP or leader looking to make an impact. Because you maintain the current systems your team is engaging in WrongThink and new VP has shiny new RightThink (AI, etc). As soon as your code hits prod you have “legacy” code.
New VP can make promises of future, theoretical riches that you can’t compete with, as you maintain the boring, current reality. Reality is not sexy or interesting. You’re in the old guard now.
A lot simply boils down to patronage. Making your higher up VP look successful and being in a position to move with them to their new company.
politics at work isn't any different than any other politics. Its not a spl breed of politics thats more pure and noble.
succeeding at workplace politics requires the same skills of identifying who to suck up to, who to eliminate and who can be trampled over to get where you want.
Like, as an engineer, I don’t doubt that this work is valuable. But you have to imagine what it must sound like from the perspective of a PM or EM. Itd be like my PM saying “I spent the last month organizing all eng docs to be properly formatted with bullet points.” You’d be like, uhh, okay, but how does that affect the rest of the company? More importantly, how does the PM distinguish engineers who are doing impactful work from the engineers who are doing the “bullet point formatting” work, of which surely some exist? From the perspective of a PM, these types of work can be hard to tell apart.
Really what you want to do is articulate what you plan to do, ahead of time, in a way that actually clicks for non-technical people. For instance, I was pushing unit tests and integration tests at my company for years but never found the political will to make them a priority. I tried and tried, but my manager just wouldn’t see it. Eventually, there was a really bad SEV, and I told her that tests would prevent this sort of thing from happening again. At that point the value became obvious. Now we have tests, and more importantly, everyone understands how valuable they are.
this involves you getting a chance to work on it in the first place. why would you in particular be getting to work on those projects?
you have to first align yourself with VP and become their bitch. someone who they can trust. you should always follow prison strategy of finding the biggest bully in the yard and becoming their bitch. only then you get to even sniff work thats important. don't even think that you will be given important projects if you show off your technical acumen and skills. that strategy usually backfires and puts a target on your back both from ur peers and superiors who now see you as a threat.
just remember ppl who got into managment positions have no technical skills anymore and are highly insecure of that fact. they will murder you if they even have a little bit of inkling that you are someone who is technically proficient that can drive projects with little help.
One of them is: technical ability is actively detrimental to your power and career. You have to spend time and energy on actually doing things, and every competent manager will do their best to keep you right where you are, with as little political influence as possible.
Conversely, as a manager, so the book says, you want to avoid actually doing anything. You should start initiatives -as many as you can- and deftly use your political capital to either own, disown, or weaponize them. Whether they succeed in creating value is irrelevant, certainly not something you should focus on.
People focused on success and value of initiatives are still working hard when you have moved on. These people are hopelessly behind the scheming manager, eating crumbs.
And if necessary, you the manager just claim credit retroactively.
If I see a staff engineer consistently trying to latch onto company initiatives and strategy goals to get funding for their pet project, I would like to fire them
Why not try to actually solve the issues, and spend the politics budget on making sure people noticed? Even if you failed on the politics thing you've at least done something useful
I think ideas also need to mature in people's minds. That can take a long time. And when the right timing comes, people might come back to your idea.
If that's how your workplace works, then find a new one.
Call me naive, but not all companies work like that. (Mine doesn't.)
I think ideas also need to mature in peoples minds. That can take a long time. And when the right timing comes, people might come back to your idea. Of course that will not always work.
You can play the game, but ask yourself if that’s the game you want to be playing. I’m wary of people who seem happy to make themselves slaves to money no matter the human cost.