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> In other words, what public tech company can engineers work at where you’re not battling for visibility and preference? There isn't one. Identifying and infl

> In other words, what public tech company can engineers work at where you’re not battling for visibility and preference? There isn't one. Identifying and influencing the people who decide stuff--who does what work, business and technical strategy, your bonus--is always a valuable and necessary skill. A good manager can do some of that for you, but can't take it over entirely. More practically, variation from group to group within a large company is usually bigger than variation between companies. I doubt a useful answer to your question exists. If you want a job with less politics, then you're probably better off assessing specific opportunities than assessing massive companies on average. Like, ask "How did you choose the tools for your most recent project?" in the interview, and see what that tells you about their power structure.

dieterrams 8y ago
My issue isn’t so much with having to influence people, but being in a situation where you’re always struggling against other people to do so, constantly being worried that a point you make in one channel will be repeated by someone else without attribution in another channel that’s more visible to people with more power, or worrying about someone who has more ‘juice’ with a manager talking down your work, when that manager doesn’t have the expertise to judge for themselves, etc. I’ve had work experiences that were completely free of this sort of thing, but at small to medium-size startups. My current employer, not so much. You’re right, of course, that I need to be assessing specific opportunities. I guess I’m just trying to see if there are any broad difference between public tech companies.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Any group of engineers is going to put up a fight if someone comes in trying to do things the "wrong" way. You want to find the tribe with the same standards and design aesthetics as your own, and that depends on what your opinions are. Tribes like this tend to run on reputation, trust, and referral. Which prior coworkers have you tended to agree with? Chances are there's a community out there of like-minded individuals, and you can tap into it by getting referred to a company staffed by then, or by referring known members to infect your own organization. Teams can have cultures of being more or less concerned about ladder-climbing, performance reviews, management's favor, etc. It's been my experience that the level of concern is inversely proportional to enjoyment of the work itself; the best defense against office politics is the classic triad of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But even a low-politics-emphasis team culture is not going to save you from worrying about these things if you choose to.
- Melchizedek 8y ago
  Perhaps it's a good sign if a company allows/encourages remote work. Since politics is often 'personal', a more impersonal setting would reduce the opportunities of people who like to play politics instead of working. It also makes it harder to hide incompetence, and since the politics players are often at least semi-incompetent in my experience, that would also work against them.
gadders 8y ago
I think that is true, but I would say some environments are more "pull others down" than "build myself up".

dieterrams 8y ago

My issue isn’t so much with having to influence people, but being in a situation where you’re always struggling against other people to do so, constantly being worried that a point you make in one channel will be repeated by someone else without attribution in another channel that’s more visible to people with more power, or worrying about someone who has more ‘juice’ with a manager talking down your work, when that manager doesn’t have the expertise to judge for themselves, etc. I’ve had work experiences that were completely free of this sort of thing, but at small to medium-size startups. My current employer, not so much. You’re right, of course, that I need to be assessing specific opportunities. I guess I’m just trying to see if there are any broad difference between public tech companies.

closeparen 8y ago
Any group of engineers is going to put up a fight if someone comes in trying to do things the "wrong" way. You want to find the tribe with the same standards and design aesthetics as your own, and that depends on what your opinions are. Tribes like this tend to run on reputation, trust, and referral. Which prior coworkers have you tended to agree with? Chances are there's a community out there of like-minded individuals, and you can tap into it by getting referred to a company staffed by then, or by referring known members to infect your own organization. Teams can have cultures of being more or less concerned about ladder-climbing, performance reviews, management's favor, etc. It's been my experience that the level of concern is inversely proportional to enjoyment of the work itself; the best defense against office politics is the classic triad of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But even a low-politics-emphasis team culture is not going to save you from worrying about these things if you choose to.
Melchizedek 8y ago
Perhaps it's a good sign if a company allows/encourages remote work. Since politics is often 'personal', a more impersonal setting would reduce the opportunities of people who like to play politics instead of working. It also makes it harder to hide incompetence, and since the politics players are often at least semi-incompetent in my experience, that would also work against them.

gadders 8y ago

I think that is true, but I would say some environments are more "pull others down" than "build myself up".