[ok_coo]

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but some of the best career advice I've heard is someone saying you should assume when you go to work that you're working under a communist dictatorship. I.E. Toe the party line, make your boss look good, (pretend to) eat up the company propaganda, assume the leader(s) (C-suite) will do whatever they want, when they want, especially giving themselves bonuses regardless of company performance.

It's a weird contrast to normal life, considering a lot of us live in democracies, but once I understood this and started acting accordingly, it helped me handle my work life.

[TheGRS]

I don't know if that's great advice, but its certainly advice that will help get you promotions and salary bumps.

Like anything there's a grey zone here. Understanding the political realities of a business is highly beneficial and will help you move forward with the company and let you know when to pick your battles. But I've watched people who do nothing but this lose the trust of those at their level. And that trust is crucial for agile development. I also personally feel like pushing back on the company when appropriate can indeed provide a lot of value to the organization. "Why are we doing this meeting?" "We need another week for testing" "I'd like to see the roadmap you are planning". Just don't push back all the time.

[Nasrudith]

It is probably good advise for most cases but individually depends on the shop and culture. Like if you really should always wear a three piece suit to interviews regardless of what they request. Some are flatter, others are more hierarchical (ironically practice can fail to line up with org chart structures).

Some are all about the politics, others don't have the luxury of self delusion or actually value the sort of brutal honesty to say "I have looked at the new framework - while trendy it is buggy inefficient crap." The ones who lack the luxury tend to be smaller but small size is no guarantee that they'll just say no to the flavor aid.