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You work at a startup. Try being engineer number 2348219589211 at <INSERT_BIG_COMPANY_HERE>. You can work your ass off on real work and still get out climbed in a heartbeat by people better at politics and schmoozing. Most companies are like this for employees; they extract your potential business value for their direct sales value.

In these environments you don't feel so bad when people are gaming the system. If it's all a popularity contest at the end of the day anyways, what does it matter? Do your bare minimum to fulfill the contract such that you can sleep peacefully.