> but I’ve also been owned by VPs and directors that are much better at politics than I am.
One surprising thing I learned when I became a mid/upper manager: It's very easy to spot lower level employees playing politics.
Part of it is because most ICs or even 1st level EMs are overconfident in their ability to play politics. They commonly overestimate their own level of social/political intelligence relative to their managers.
The other part is that they just don't have as much insight and communication within the company. They think they're persuading or manipulating (depending on intentions) a certain stakeholder to form some alliance to push an agenda, but 5 minutes after that conversation that stakeholder sends a message back to their manager giving them a subtle heads up about the politicking going on. I can't count how many times we, as management, watched clumsy office politicking attempts play out while doing our best to gently keep them contained without bursting someone's bubble and making them angry.
I’m dumb about it. I don’t have a scheme, I don’t have a hidden agenda, I don’t have ulterior motives… I’ve got what I think is great engineering (divorced from what the customer or business wants in the short term) and I just diligently try to make that happen. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve always got the long term health of the system (and fairness to the workers next to me
) in mind. I say the same thing to everyone, I’m open and honest, and I get wrecked every time I try to execute any strategy that doesn’t accidentally align with something a VP wants.
Ya’ll are so much better at this it’s scary. I can’t really read when I’m being lied to in the moment, I usually naively believe that support I’m getting is because my ideas are good, or that management has the same view of the collective good that I do.
I spent a while in the marines as an enlisted man, lower NCO. There is no politics and people next to you have to trust each other with their lives. I never really made the turn to what the world is outside of that, I’ve always struggled with it.
I learned not to try. Ya’ll can do politics. I’ll write one pagers and wait for my chances to make things better.
Working with naive people is such a relief. They never surprise you with some f-ed up shenanigans just to make themselves look good, and they are worth their weight in gold. I try to be naive myself as well. But reality is political in the end.
I do the politics I think are necessary, but otherwise stay in my bubbles of naive, trusting and kind people I have stumbled upon.
One surprising thing I learned when I became a mid/upper manager: It's very easy to spot lower level employees playing politics.
Part of it is because most ICs or even 1st level EMs are overconfident in their ability to play politics. They commonly overestimate their own level of social/political intelligence relative to their managers.
The other part is that they just don't have as much insight and communication within the company. They think they're persuading or manipulating (depending on intentions) a certain stakeholder to form some alliance to push an agenda, but 5 minutes after that conversation that stakeholder sends a message back to their manager giving them a subtle heads up about the politicking going on. I can't count how many times we, as management, watched clumsy office politicking attempts play out while doing our best to gently keep them contained without bursting someone's bubble and making them angry.