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by arcticbull 2474 days ago
These are excellent, except for one, which is to avoid politics. Politics is the art of making other people want the things that you want. If you can't do that, you're not a senior engineer. Politics is critical for your success, and honestly, a large number of these sixty points fall under, IMO, politics.

tl;dr: s/"Avoid politics, but have right folks vouch for your work"/"Become an adept politician".
2 comments
littleblah 2474 days ago
> Politics is the art of making other people want the things that you want.

I would say tactical negotiation and leveraging personal connect is healthy, but manipulation for personal gains at the cost of a larger good is what is my definition of "politics".

I have seen couple of managers in my career who, while were poor managers based on employee voice surveys in the company, ended up with large charters due to being good at politics/"rubbing backs". I want to say that end result was they screwed it up since their directs ended up leaving their team, but in reality, they thrived despite losing folks and not delivering projects, again due to politics. As an engineer, I failed to appreciate that.

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arcticbull 2474 days ago
Sure, that's totally fair, but let's step back for a second. Let's say there's you, who's got the company's best interests at heart and a great technical/product direction. Then there's Steve. Steve is rubbing backs, in it for himself, but in the pocket of everyone who matters. Who's gonna win? Sadly, it's Steve. Not playing politics is a great way to lose at politics because you're going to get beaten by the first person who is.

Now, if you're a good politician with the best interests of the company at heart and the technical skills to deliver, the math is different, and the sky's the limit for you :)

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icebraining 2474 days ago
> manipulation for personal gains at the cost of a larger good is what is my definition of "politics".

I think that's an unhelpful definition; one should avoid conflating the activity with a particular goal. Politics is governance and decision-making, and how to convince people to support your position; whether that's performed for personal gain, or for the good of the company, or for the good of society (and the three are not mutually exclusive), is another thing.

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littleblah 2474 days ago
fair enough
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KaiserPro 2474 days ago
indeed, You need to be an adept politician.

This means developing empathy for other sides of the business, building up favours from other teams, forging alliances, listening, gathering intelligence and spotting trends.

at some point, you _will_ have to make hard decisions, your budget will be cut, project killed, etc, etc. If you are a skilled "work politician" you may be able to negate some, or all of the bad effects.

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