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Note how everything you categorize as 'high-impact' is basically politics. "Rather than focus on delivering results (which again is difficult(!), might be wron

by fisf 4y ago

Note how everything you categorize as 'high-impact' is basically politics. "Rather than focus on delivering results (which again is difficult(!), might be wrong, and often not easily identified by leadership), these people spend time making alliances and crafting narratives about outcomes instead of delivering. Title acquisition becomes the goal, seeking to maximize the expected organizational rewards, at the expense of direct results, all while working to minimize accountability."

namelessoracle 4y ago
Politics is something you do or something that is done to you is the saying no? Would you rather someone from engineering do your politics for you? Or someone from product or the business? I think the engineering person will look after you better. Where it becomes fascinating is the 10+ year EM. They used to know what to do, but clearly don't anymore. They either accept that, and lean on their leads for technical decisions and just focus on politics, or dont accept it and thats what it can get bad fast.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
refurb 4y ago
I mean, a company is made up of a bunch of people, all with different ideas on how thinks should be done and in the end it’s often influence that decides the path forward. Of course organizations have politics. It will always be that way unless you get rid of all the humans.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I think the issue is that it's sort of circular, like, "managers provide value when they convince other managers not to be obstacles". I think there's important stuff managers can do, but creating complex hierarchies that they then have to navigate or circumvent is a neutral contribution at best, from a systemic standpoint rather than an individual one. For this high performer who's earned their promotion, having their manager go to bat for them is incredibly valuable. But if the reason they needed a manager to advocate for them was that other managers were either adversarial or ambivalent, that's just adding back value that was previously removed. To be clear, I'm addressing this narrow aspect of management, I've had managers who helped me resolve disputes, get access to resources and opportunities I couldn't have gotten on my own, et cetera, and I see the value in that without qualification.
  - refurb 4y ago
    But if the reason they needed a manager to advocate for them was that other managers were either adversarial or ambivalent, that's just adding back value that was previously removed. But "adversarial" management is just a reality in company that has $X to spend and 12 different ways to spend it. Business decisions often have to made with limited data. A engineers "super cool feature that should obviously be implemented" is not so obvious at the CEO level where there are multiple competing projects. As such there is a need to "sell" ideas internally -> that's politics.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Just because it is the reality doesn't mean it can't be critiqued though, right? If the CEO doesn't have insight into this situation because their attention is divided - maybe the CEO should provide the people closer to the problem with the information they need to do their jobs, and trust that they've hired good people who will digest this information, prioritize appropriately, and get the job done? If they can't trust that's the case, then isn't that the problem we should be discussing? Maybe the CEO should focus on the strategic direction of the company and securing the investment required to implement it, and not manage projects at the feature level? Generally I find that managers are awesome at facilitating stuff and making sure information gets where it needs to go but that when they dictate it leads to bad decision making because they don't have the proper insight. This becomes exacerbated as you add levels of indirection are between the manager dictating decisions and the people on the ground implementing them. That isn't per say their fault, it's just the dynamics of hierarchies. As information travels up the hierarchy it becomes more essentialized and nonspecific. It loses fidelity. Statistics can travel up the hierarchy, experience can't. So that engineer who's close to the problem has this rich first hand information about the system, and the CEO has a spreadsheet and third- or forth-hand accounts of the situation on the ground. There's certainly a lot of global, systemic insights you can make from that position and useful work to be done. But it's probably not whether a individual feature of a broader project should or should not be implemented. Internal salesmanship is a bandaid, but structuring the organization differently is a solution.
      - 4y ago
beernet 4y ago
Degrading "developing your people and networking" as "politics" just shows the lack of overall business and people acumen that engineers tend to suffer from. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you are aware of this, but these type of statements usually lead to engineers drifting away more and more from the purpose of the company.
- fisf 4y ago
  It's not degrading or a value judgment (at this point). But OPs post / self described high impact activities pretty much fit the definition of (company) politics perfectly. The many pertinent questions I am asking are: Is it useful or necessary, to have people doing company politics full time, what are the incentives? What does this say about an organisation? Is such (internal) politics healthy for an org, how much is it predicated on, and much does it foster internal tribalism?

by fisf 4y ago

namelessoracle 4y ago

Politics is something you do or something that is done to you is the saying no? Would you rather someone from engineering do your politics for you? Or someone from product or the business? I think the engineering person will look after you better. Where it becomes fascinating is the 10+ year EM. They used to know what to do, but clearly don't anymore. They either accept that, and lean on their leads for technical decisions and just focus on politics, or dont accept it and thats what it can get bad fast.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

refurb 4y ago

I mean, a company is made up of a bunch of people, all with different ideas on how thinks should be done and in the end it’s often influence that decides the path forward. Of course organizations have politics. It will always be that way unless you get rid of all the humans.

maxbond 4y ago
I think the issue is that it's sort of circular, like, "managers provide value when they convince other managers not to be obstacles". I think there's important stuff managers can do, but creating complex hierarchies that they then have to navigate or circumvent is a neutral contribution at best, from a systemic standpoint rather than an individual one. For this high performer who's earned their promotion, having their manager go to bat for them is incredibly valuable. But if the reason they needed a manager to advocate for them was that other managers were either adversarial or ambivalent, that's just adding back value that was previously removed. To be clear, I'm addressing this narrow aspect of management, I've had managers who helped me resolve disputes, get access to resources and opportunities I couldn't have gotten on my own, et cetera, and I see the value in that without qualification.
- refurb 4y ago
  But if the reason they needed a manager to advocate for them was that other managers were either adversarial or ambivalent, that's just adding back value that was previously removed. But "adversarial" management is just a reality in company that has $X to spend and 12 different ways to spend it. Business decisions often have to made with limited data. A engineers "super cool feature that should obviously be implemented" is not so obvious at the CEO level where there are multiple competing projects. As such there is a need to "sell" ideas internally -> that's politics.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Just because it is the reality doesn't mean it can't be critiqued though, right? If the CEO doesn't have insight into this situation because their attention is divided - maybe the CEO should provide the people closer to the problem with the information they need to do their jobs, and trust that they've hired good people who will digest this information, prioritize appropriately, and get the job done? If they can't trust that's the case, then isn't that the problem we should be discussing? Maybe the CEO should focus on the strategic direction of the company and securing the investment required to implement it, and not manage projects at the feature level? Generally I find that managers are awesome at facilitating stuff and making sure information gets where it needs to go but that when they dictate it leads to bad decision making because they don't have the proper insight. This becomes exacerbated as you add levels of indirection are between the manager dictating decisions and the people on the ground implementing them. That isn't per say their fault, it's just the dynamics of hierarchies. As information travels up the hierarchy it becomes more essentialized and nonspecific. It loses fidelity. Statistics can travel up the hierarchy, experience can't. So that engineer who's close to the problem has this rich first hand information about the system, and the CEO has a spreadsheet and third- or forth-hand accounts of the situation on the ground. There's certainly a lot of global, systemic insights you can make from that position and useful work to be done. But it's probably not whether a individual feature of a broader project should or should not be implemented. Internal salesmanship is a bandaid, but structuring the organization differently is a solution.
    - 4y ago

beernet 4y ago

Degrading "developing your people and networking" as "politics" just shows the lack of overall business and people acumen that engineers tend to suffer from. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you are aware of this, but these type of statements usually lead to engineers drifting away more and more from the purpose of the company.

fisf 4y ago
It's not degrading or a value judgment (at this point). But OPs post / self described high impact activities pretty much fit the definition of (company) politics perfectly. The many pertinent questions I am asking are: Is it useful or necessary, to have people doing company politics full time, what are the incentives? What does this say about an organisation? Is such (internal) politics healthy for an org, how much is it predicated on, and much does it foster internal tribalism?