[kamaal]

Being blind to politics rarely ever means politics isn't going on.

Pretty much every company out there has a concept of 'promotion packet', its basically building a case for one's promotion. Of course in a company the budgets are fixed, and so are promotion cycles(yearly in most places). You miss out a turn, you could lose an year, or even risk losing two. In that case its fairly common for managers to build a list of accomplishments(file/packet), and rival managers to build a anti-case/defence for the same. Stack ranking eventually is all about a combination of merit+advocacy+lobbying+counter-lobbying at so many levels that I'd say the engineer who cried wasn't wrong at all.

This is the case in nearly every company. We just wish to delude ourselves that politics is absent at some places.

This sort of power play comes with the territory in a large people structure.