[cookiecaper]

To some extent I think this type of experience is almost a rite of passage as developers become increasingly senior. I've had experiences along these lines as have most of my more seasoned colleagues. Management sounds OK from a distance, but when devs realize the kind of petty idiocy that will now dictate their daily life, it's normal to start running back to the compiler.

This may not be true in companies where engineers make up the upper echelons, but it invariably seems to occur in other types of companies. Management is a fundamental game change, and it's not about programming, and it's not about organization or efficiency. It's not about how good a manager may or may not be at getting things done. It's about psychology, the psychology of the people higher or lateral in the structure more than the psychology of a manager's direct downline (though both require cultivation).

The number one rule of management, and employment in general if you want to rise through the ranks, is ABC: Always Be Campaigning. If this doesn't sound good to you, you don't want to go into management, and you probably don't want to be a normal employee for very long either, because if you aren't doing it, you're going to pay sooner or later.

Everyone tries to tell themselves that their employer is different for reasons X, Y, and Z, but it's very unlikely to be true, no matter how nice you think your company is. I've even experienced the ramifications of not adopting ABC just in the last few weeks at another company that I swore was different this time and is lead by an old-school computer engineer who has been working since the 80s, and I'm not even trying to do any management-type stuff there, as I'm still reeling from last time I tried my hand at that.

It's hard to come out of these experiences without a massively pessimistic view of everyone else. Any time I try to allow myself to become optimistic and think, "Nah, these guys aren't like that", and no matter how much evidence I think I have, it all comes back to people being people and heavily favoring typical pre-programmed people responses, even if those responses may not be well-considered or well-informed. Biology is hard to override.

It seems if you want a different employment experience, you must compromise such that you are always campaigning.

[kyllo]

Thanks for this post. Can you drill into a little bit what you mean by "campaigning" though? Do you just mean constantly lobbying people in your organization to gather support for process changes, new programs, initiatives etc. that you want to sponsor?

[cookiecaper]

No, the problem is believing that it's about important things like programs, processes, and initiatives. The reality is most people can't and don't want to understand that type of stuff. That doesn't just apply to MBAs, it applies even to most of the people in your department. You'll become their enemy if you go in there and start advocating all but the most minor and gradual changes (even this is dangerous). Consultants are paid to operate outside of the political structure, not employees. If you want to recommend changes and get ignored, do it as a consultant because you'll be better paid and have less stress in doing so, since you'd be ignored as an employee too but you'd also be collecting personal political enmity.

If you want to be an employee, you have to play politics. You have to be campaigning for yourself. As an employee, you are your product, your brand, and you're supplying it to the customer, your employer. For the same reasons that front-line customer service representatives for retailers and phone companies have to go all day biting their tongues, you also must do so as a front-line representative of your personal brand. It doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what is or isn't better or worse. Nobody wants to hear it and nobody cares. Some people may say they're hiring you for your opinion on things like that -- those people are lying, don't believe them. They just want you to coo gently to them and give them whatever they want, or a close enough approximation thereof that they can't really tell the difference.

You have to always be the nice, self-sacrificing guy who doesn't make any waves but is just so grateful for anything and everything and always go the triple-extra mile to help out. The guy who is always taking his co-workers to lunch because he appreciates them that much. The one with the "charisma", the "flair", and the "charm". In short, the sycophant, just barely non-obviously. That is how influence is aggregated.

As an employee, your productive output is secondary to successfully running a personal campaign. You do all the schmoozing, make all the power plays and all the disingenuous convenience connections you would if you were running for a real political office, basically the whole shebang except the posters. As long as you kinda-sorta look like you're doing some actual work somewhere under the covers, it doesn't matter if you actually are or not. What matters is that you become that guy. If you are employed, your real job is selling yourself to your colleagues (mostly superiors, the further up the chain you can get known and get positive attention the better). Devote 75% of your energy to this task and 25% or less of your energy into whatever you were actually hired to do and you'll go far.

This is geared toward employment in general, but it's 50x more important if you're in a management or leadership position, because at that point you don't really have a real job to divert any energy toward anymore anyway.

There are some companies where this is so expected that your continued employment is jeopardized if you don't do it (like my previous employer), and other companies where you'll just be passed up for advancements and go unnoticed if you don't do it (like my present employer). There's not really a third type of company excepting very small startups, which is usually not the kind of place someone looking to be employed would wind up.