> you do every thing purely on merit, every decision is only technical? Yeah, honestly. The vast majority of my hard decisions I made were based on schedule an

> you do every thing purely on merit, every decision is only technical? Yeah, honestly. The vast majority of my hard decisions I made were based on schedule and resources: having to kill things or move people around. The only "political" anomaly I witnessed was that it seemed the employees at the Israel Design Center at Intel were getting promoted to principal at a much faster rate, and with much less years and experience, for what didn't seem like actual merit. But that didn't impact me other than some jealousy, because the line for principal promotion in my division(s) were very long with really really smart people. And I've seen many principals get shown the door for poor performance. One possibility is that I never reached a level where politics mattered, or teams were small enough that it didn't have time to foment. And there certainly people who lived to become managers because they thought it was a status symbol, but I was happy for them to do the job. Another could be that I'm just... well, daft. Both are possible. :)