[CapitalistCartr]

A few useful phrases to memorize:

When someone asks for information, rather than try to answer immediately, or rush to research, ask, "When do you need that by?" Even if they tell you it's urgent, it causes them to consider.

"Sure, I'd be glad to. Just let my boss know you need me." If they hem and haw, be suspicious.

"What budget is that coming out of?"

Other useful tidbits: Politics is a euphemism for, someone's ego will otherwise get hurt. Tangentially, your ego isn't you. Don't let it getting hurt affect your thinking.

Most people are naturally good; the one's who aren't work hard to position themselves in a position handling communications. So be careful to route communications as directly as allowed, and regularly check what's incoming.

Faith is blind, trust is earned.

[awillen]

PM here: I agree completely. A lot of PMs aren't great with phrasing requests, and they come off sounding way more urgent than they are. I used to be guilty of this, and I thought it was great how responsive the engineers were until a manager told me I was disrupting their schedules with all of my urgent requests. We solved that one pretty quickly by agreeing I'd specify the timeline for eng requests, and for things that were big and urgent, I'd check with team lead/manager before asking. If any of those engineers had asked me how urgent things were, we wouldn't have run into that problem (which is not to say it's their fault - it was my job to give that context - just to say that an inexperienced PM won't mind you asking about timing/urgency at all and you may save him issues down the line).

[kojeovo]

I would avoid asking people "What budget is that coming out of?" if I was a student / fresh out of school, but the other points I definitely agree with.

[nlawalker]

In the same vein as these - when someone asks if something can be achieved, unless the answer is "No, because the physical laws of our universe prevent it," then the answer is "Yes, with the following assumptions, caveats and tradeoffs..."

[bonyt]

> Most people are naturally good; the one's who aren't work hard to position themselves in a position handling communications. So be careful to route communications as directly as allowed, and regularly check what's incoming.

I'm really curious what you mean by this, "a position handling communications"?

[Benjammer]

Most people aren't bad actors. Some people are. Almost all bad actors know that they are bad actors, it's not a matter of ignorance or stupidity. The easiest tool of bad actors is manipulating communication. Lying, changing expectations, telling different people different parts/sides of the whole story, weaseling out of responsibility, brown-nosing, etc. A lot of bad actors will strive to put themselves in "lead" type of roles where they don't actually have the responsibility of direct reports, but where they can get their fingers into the communication channels for their team. Then, they use that position to get their fingers into the communication channels of other teams as well. They keep doing this and moving farther away from actually having to produce anything themselves. The manipulative communication becomes their entire output and job function, so they optimize it over time and get really good at it.

[qorrect]

Dang you just knocked that out of the park.

For me lately the 'Just let my boss know' works really well, let them hammer out the details.