Well, while you can't formally teach the ins and outs of office politics, a lot of it can be explained in simple terms. This is exactly what a friend did for m

Well, while you can't formally teach the ins and outs of office politics, a lot of it can be explained in simple terms. This is exactly what a friend did for me, and there really are rules, they're just not official, and a lot of the data is local. I personally view it as basically a giant game of negotiation, where you need to know what people want/need, what's useful to the structure, how people will react, and what the constraints are ('x can complain all he wants that he's not getting this and that, he's essentially stuck here because the market is really bad and has no power', 'y wants z, I can help him with this, but it will conflict with t who wants z as well', etc) , all this long term and short term. I think it's especially difficult for engineers, since it's very not black and white, there's no man page, you must talk to people, and it takes a lot of time. I'm not good at it, but there's a huge difference between not having a clue, and having a basic understanding what's happening. I've had colleagues call me before a meeting with person y, since I knew y, and they wanted to know how to approach things, which usually translated into 'what's he/she like/wants?' Strangely enough, aside from the daily political explanation from my friend (to whom I 'll be forever grateful) the one thing which has helped me tremendously has been playing rpgs (games in general actually) with lots of choices, because it's none of them are ideal, and they're all about trade-offs. Edit : I understand that in an ideal world we wouldn't have to do that. But things are often grey. And people are people!