[dannyw]

Understand the motivations of your managers, and your managers manager.

Figure out who the internal competitors are.

Learn what gets rewarded in an organisation. This often has little correlation to actual value.

Optimise for political capital, not whats right.

Don't make a scene. Don't cause drama. Don't be stupid enough to lead anti-company movements, e.g. discussing pay inequality, or unionisation.

Be cordial and respectful to everyone, even if they don't deserve it.

[holografix]

This is really good advice (sadly) but I will disagree/add one point:

> Optimise for political capital not what’s right.

Yes and no. Often what’s politically valuable is short term and misaligned with what the company’s values are.

Pushing back diplomatically might be the smarter thing in the mid to long term. be mindful of where the request comes from and from whom.

[robocat]

Some people strongly disagree with playing the game this way: however parent is fantastic advice because you need to know how others are playing to win, and you need to recognise those players and fit your game style appropriately to adjust for that.

[makk]

Ouch. Where do you work?

[holografix]

Any company with more than 100 people will display these behaviours.

Companies with > 1000 employees will operate completely like this. Where there will always be 3 “priorities” for every manager: what they were told by the C-level, what they know to be important to their manager and what _they_ want to get out of their position.

The amount of times I have been caught totally off guard because I couldn’t fathom why a certain team or individual would be actively doing something to the detriment of the business… only to later understand it was to the benefit of their unit/selves.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I'm not the grandparent poster you replied to, but this is pretty standard operating procedure for political success in almost any large organization.

[jjj123]

This is dark. But it definitely rings true.