[shermantanktop]

One person’s “politics” is another person’s “demonstrate basic empathy and understand that your point of view is not universal.”

Yes, there are creatures who have no real skills other than navigating political currents. But there are also creatures who can’t understand that technical brilliance is no excuse for utter social cluelessness.

[rqtwteye]

You seem to think that people are either good self promoters or socially total clueless. There are a lot of very good people who have normal social skills but aren't good at self promotion (or just don't want to do it). These people won't go very far in most organizations. Self promoters without real skills will win over them. Best is to have real skill and also be a good self promoter.

[shermantanktop]

Of course there's a spectrum here. But when I read someone complain "I did great technical work but POLITICS," there are several possible scenarios:

1. The engineer is reasonable and the people they complain about are craven self-promoters with no real skills

2. The engineer is unreasonable and the people they complain about have normal, regular, business-normative expectations of engineer conduct.

3. Both - the engineer is bad and the self-promoting people are bad.

Your scenario lines up with #1, i think.

I see all three happening. I see many engineers who are gruff, entitled, lack the ability to talk about anything other than their own work, cultivate perceptions of technical status, and seem to actively want to make everyone avoid them. I also see social climbers (#2), but they are easy to spot and not that common in my environment (though others are of course different, including at previous companies).

[gator123]

I swear there needs to be an emotional maturity course or something in university

[shermantanktop]

That's the secret of higher education! Forget about the coursework, forget about the social aspect, forget about exposure to ideas. The actual value of universities is that you keep kids busy during the time when they are potentially destructive, and when they pop out they are now magically older and can handle some basic adulthood-on-training-wheels expectations.

And yet a few hundred years ago we had 14-year-olds in the mines of Cornwall supporting whole families.