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> too many people that believe the workplace is a political place. I heard a kid ask what politics was all about. It's an interesting question for anyone to st

> too many people that believe the workplace is a political place. I heard a kid ask what politics was all about. It's an interesting question for anyone to stop and think about. Everyone will come up with their own conclusions, but I personally would ask what in a workplace is _not_ political ? From hiring practices, environmental impact, customer/community management (minorities, disabled people, freedom of speech etc.), social mission, where the funds come from, where the lobbying money goes...your argument could be that employee should ignore everything a company does except what they are explicitly ordered to care about, but that doesn't look like what we socially expect from employees and people will be personally affected by how their company behaves as a whole. I'm not arguing for extreme activism everywhere you work, but saying the workplace is free of politics goes way too far on the other extreme.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wyclif 4y ago
[flagged]
- jnwatson 4y ago
  There's nothing I see at Google that I didn't see at every other corporate job. They spend perhaps an extra 60 seconds about it at large meetings.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  And what makes you so confident “high-value” engineers share your politics?
solarmist 4y ago
Obviously “politics” is anything different than the status quo. But you are right. Everything is politics when it comes down to it, the only difference is whether something is considered a norm or not.
gabesullice 4y ago
> From hiring practices … [to] where the lobbying money goes.… What in a workplace is _not_ political? These are all great examples of "not your job" precisely because the people responsible for these concerns are the owners, and by extension the board, and by even further extension the "officers" appointed to concern themselves with these issues. To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. No matter how good their intentions, they're not going to be effective because they're not charged with those duties and so they rarely have the tools and authority to implement the changes they might be advocating. That lack of agency leads to frustration and discontent, and it distracts those looking to you for direction. What is _not_ political as a tech lead? Making sure tickets are scoped well. Identifying poorly tested parts of the codebase. Anticipating future requirements and designing systems that will accomodate them. Setting expectations and ensuring that your team meets them, such as good commentary, an appropriate level of testing, or the quality of code reviews given amongst your team. Of course, you need to be a good leader to accomplish those things, and there's a political aspect to good leadership, but those duties don't have much to do with, say, the environmental impact of the company. To be clear, I'm not saying any of the causes you brought up aren't important, but I do feel like a lot of people have taken up those causes in venues where they're personally unlikely to be very effective (and content).
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. It's trickier than that I think. Imagine for instance as a tech lead you realize the resumes of some specific minority all get shutdown by HR before interviewing. As a tech lead you make a polite inquiry, and they tell you nothing's wrong, they have their reasons they can't tell you, and you should mind your business. You could argue any move from there could be out of your mandate...but as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team. And hiring the best people fits into these optics. So you'd talk with some colleages about how you think it makes your team worse you couldn't hire that specific person you pushed as a candidate. The discussion extends to hiring criteria in general. More people come to you to share ideas. And now you have a group chat about hiring ethics that makes the management uncomfortable.
seventhtiger 4y ago
Everything is also math, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or computation, or philosophy, or economics, or psychology. It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself. "Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wyclif 4y ago

[flagged]

jnwatson 4y ago
There's nothing I see at Google that I didn't see at every other corporate job. They spend perhaps an extra 60 seconds about it at large meetings.
emodendroket 4y ago
And what makes you so confident “high-value” engineers share your politics?

solarmist 4y ago

Obviously “politics” is anything different than the status quo. But you are right. Everything is politics when it comes down to it, the only difference is whether something is considered a norm or not.

gabesullice 4y ago

> From hiring practices … [to] where the lobbying money goes.… What in a workplace is _not_ political? These are all great examples of "not your job" precisely because the people responsible for these concerns are the owners, and by extension the board, and by even further extension the "officers" appointed to concern themselves with these issues. To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. No matter how good their intentions, they're not going to be effective because they're not charged with those duties and so they rarely have the tools and authority to implement the changes they might be advocating. That lack of agency leads to frustration and discontent, and it distracts those looking to you for direction. What is _not_ political as a tech lead? Making sure tickets are scoped well. Identifying poorly tested parts of the codebase. Anticipating future requirements and designing systems that will accomodate them. Setting expectations and ensuring that your team meets them, such as good commentary, an appropriate level of testing, or the quality of code reviews given amongst your team. Of course, you need to be a good leader to accomplish those things, and there's a political aspect to good leadership, but those duties don't have much to do with, say, the environmental impact of the company. To be clear, I'm not saying any of the causes you brought up aren't important, but I do feel like a lot of people have taken up those causes in venues where they're personally unlikely to be very effective (and content).

makeitdouble 4y ago
> To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. It's trickier than that I think. Imagine for instance as a tech lead you realize the resumes of some specific minority all get shutdown by HR before interviewing. As a tech lead you make a polite inquiry, and they tell you nothing's wrong, they have their reasons they can't tell you, and you should mind your business. You could argue any move from there could be out of your mandate...but as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team. And hiring the best people fits into these optics. So you'd talk with some colleages about how you think it makes your team worse you couldn't hire that specific person you pushed as a candidate. The discussion extends to hiring criteria in general. More people come to you to share ideas. And now you have a group chat about hiring ethics that makes the management uncomfortable.

seventhtiger 4y ago

Everything is also math, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or computation, or philosophy, or economics, or psychology. It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself. "Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.