[thenose]

The other (depressing) situation is that newcomers often want to praise someone for their work, not realizing they work in a company whose managers are focused on playing games and forming alliances. In such environments, praising someone can actually work against you. I've heard the finance tech industry tends to suffer from this.

Thankfully this seems rarer than the one you're mentioning, where everyone is happy to build a nice company they want to work for. It's an odd situation, where the natural incentives align to reward the opposite. Is there a way to guard against those?

[gabereiser]

I’ve seen things…

Unfortunately the only way to win at office politics is to either not play, or play to win. Pick. If you find yourself in an organization where upper management is vying for control playing politics and alliances, I think it might be time to reach out to your network.