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I hate office politics as much as the next developer. This FT article is a very light "review" of a book called "7 Rules Of Power". To save you time, here are

I hate office politics as much as the next developer. This FT article is a very light "review" of a book called "7 Rules Of Power". To save you time, here are the 7 rules: 1. Get out of your own way. 2. Break the rules. 3. Appear powerful. 4. Build a powerful brand. 5. Network relentlessly. 6. Use your power. 7. Success excuses almost everything you may have done to acquire power. "Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed. So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about." As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book.

foobarian 3y ago
> success in the workplace Even that can be so many different things. Measured how - title? Number of underlings? Number of committees? Money?
- lazide 3y ago
  Money, and interesting problems to work on.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  In my experience there's a few that are critical: Getting the funnest projects Getting reasonable flexibility in hours or days Not being the garbage disposal, meaning you are allowed to work on important, not necessarily urgent things Etc These do require politics and reputation management. But much of it is being reliable and asking for what you want, but doing what you're given. The rest, a non-negligible amount, comes from the active steps listed on GP.
- gcp123 3y ago
  Power, money, influence.
- gumby 3y ago
  What you consider success is up to you. The criteria you listed may matter to you or they may be other peoples’ criteria of success. Perhaps success for you is “known as important enough that I’m never on the layoff list”. And “get to spend time with my family; can avoid the death march programs”.
rayiner 3y ago
As an aside, I also think this explains the "bamboo ceiling" phenomenon. South asian culture is comfortable with self-promotion--my dad taught me most of these rules from a young age--in a way I get the impression east asian culture maybe looks down upon. That plays out when you look at who is in management. So if you're an engineer (from any background) who wants to move up, consider reading this book.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  People who are constantly asserting their own value are definitely looked down upon by a whole lot of their peers. If that's what you mean by "comfortable with self-promotion," it's a double-edged sword.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Your peers don’t make promotion decisions.
    - esafak 3y ago
      Generally true, but not if they start their own companies.
    - shermantanktop 3y ago
      Your bosses notice this too. EDIT: not you personally,sorry. In any case, I sit in promo discussions all the time and self-promoting behavior has the unintended effect of driving greater scrutiny.
  - loeg 3y ago
    It's a showing vs telling thing, isn't it? Don't just tell everyone you're awesome; show people the cool/challenging work you've done.
WWLink 3y ago
> As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book. I feel like you can still gain a lot of respect by loving to code. For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits. You'll have your name in documentation. A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring. That in itself all earns you valuable respect. Perhaps it's not the same as making sure the CEO knows that you made this piece of software, and did this thing, and that thing... but it does make its way there in a healthy organization.
- reactordev 3y ago
  “For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits” Or… you’re a busy body that likes to move files around and pretty things up leaving your name on the blame and making it look like you did a ton of work. All you did was open it/save it in VIM. Let’s not praise false indicators. Lines of code isn’t a good measurement of quality, nor is lines committed.
  - MiguelX413 3y ago
    Not necessarily.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    The dude who probably had the most commits at our org was just chosen as the sacrificial lamb of the development team's share of cost cutting. Now I have no opinion of his work personally due to working separately and I generally thought highly of him as a person, but he was considered by some to be responsible for one of the most significant engineering f-ups in the history of the org. It is generally true that traumatic events resonate more deeply with people than positive ones. So you can quietly commit code all day everyday, but if your mistakes are more visible than your successes then you won't go far.
    - Jensson 3y ago
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
> "So, it seems office politics is not optional' is based on the unstated premise: 'if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about.'" The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. In those places, people are simply not allowed to not care about success or they'll get washed out because of low promotion velocity.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  Was trying to find a way to reply to your comment about my book. But yes, I wrote a scifi novel about a computer hacker and occasionally post it here. Calling me a "shill" for trying to promote my book seems harsh. Have you ever tried to accomplish anything in your life? How would you suggest a new author gets their work outlet there?
  - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
    Your account has been around long enough that you should be amply familiar with the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page, particularly the one about not using HN for promoting your own products. However, if you believe that your post has been unfairly flagged, you may contact the site moderators, whose email address is also in the guidelines, and make your case to them.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  This isn't true at all at Google (well, wasn't, 2016-2023). The value was/is in signalling you don't care. Large portions of employees are ye olde Ivy League grad / 2nd generation wealthy. More WASP values than hacker values.
- AdieuToLogic 3y ago
  Success != Promotions > The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. If given a choice between "up or out" and "up" is not what one wants to do (for whatever reasons), then "out" is the only path which might lead to happiness, as "here" is not an option allowed.
NoPicklez 3y ago
As someone who started at a big four firm 8 years ago in cyber consulting, a lot of this rings true outside of programming. Especially the part about not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind. I was the worker who kept their head down, did good work and built good networks with people around me early on in my career. I got a lot of feedback through 1:1 discussions that said "You do great work and particular people know that, but other people with influence don't". You don't need to be a dick and push others around to show your value, but speaking up, being supporting of others openly and contributing in other areas help show people who you are. All of this needs to be wrapped up under leaders who support growth.
Exoristos 3y ago
How different is this from, Be an open and optimistic communicator, exploit opportunities vigorously as they arise, show confidence in your track record and your thinking -- for the good of yourself and the business? In other words, "office politics" does not have to be odious.
0ckpuppet 3y ago
some of these rules sound like euphemisms for backstabby lickspittle who's biggest expertise is resembing an expert.
bitwize 3y ago
> "Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed. The best business advice I ever received came in a dream in which All Might (from My Hero Academia) told me: "If you want to succeed and get recognized at work, you must let your company know: 'I am here!'"
jay_kyburz 3y ago
I cringe a little reading that list, but I do think people should spend time thinking about, and communicating their worth. I'm in games development, and many years ago when I worked in a big studio we used to do these Friday afternoon meetings where people would stand up and show off the best work they did during the week. The artists would show off a cool new character model, or a programmer might show how the pathfinder improved, or some nice new animation blending. I'm sure some people hated it, but I think it was really great for the whole team to sit around and congratulate each other for what was achieved that week.
jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago
[flagged]
j-bos 3y ago
Agreed, for most of us those games are optional, But "good" people still need to play, and play well. When they don't we get 21st century Boeing
gmd63 3y ago
It's wild to me that folks seem to be unable to figure out how to fix rot at large companies when this is such a toxic set of trials for selecting people to put in power
- bdw5204 3y ago
  Society can't figure out how to stop the most toxic, corrupt and incompetent people from becoming high ranking politicians so it makes perfect sense for the same kind of rot to be endemic at large corporations. Rotten people gravitate towards power and most of those who aren't rotten are cowards who won't do anything to stop them because that'd risk their own careers or their own relationships with people naive enough to fall for the rotten people who are climbing towards the top. The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon. Or you know, competition from new companies that will replace them. So companies can't rot too much, they have to continue to provide at least a bit of value or get replaced.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  The reason is more often than not it just cannot be fixed. Only way to fix it is to fundamentally start fresh.
  - gmd63 3y ago
    I feel like with the level of surveillance we point at ad targeting, if we just steered it in the right direction it would provide at least some clue in sussing out who is power gaming versus people who are earnestly trying to do good for the team On a personal level I've developed a sense for when someone tends toward these behaviors, like when they downplay the contribution of someone who actually did work while promoting their "direction" which happened outside of recorded history
saghm 3y ago
> So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about." > As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book. Agreed. I think it's also a false dichotomy that you either have to "play the game" or "not play the game"; as most things, how much you want to "play the game" is a spectrum, and there's definitely merit in picking your battles. I ultimately don't care enough about most technical decisions in the products I've worked on to try to outmaneuver someone else who's trying to play politics, but if someone is actively politicking to try to affect _me_ specifically rather than the product, I'm not likely to stand by and let it happen rather than try to influence things. It's useful to be able to understand how office politics work from defensive perspective even if you don't plan to actively utilize it.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  I think some of the debate here is that politics is always happening to you, you have no choice but to play the game. You can be passive or active, you are just choosing to be passive but you're still playing. So, if you don't want to play it's still better to know the rules.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neilv 3y ago
If you start a company, how do you avoid anyone trying to practice those 7 "rules" and BS-ify your company? When some individuals do try this BS, can you correct or eject them fast enough, or is it inevitable that they take over? Does BS-ification always start bottom-up, top-down, or it varies? Is there a point at which a company as an entity consciously chooses BS for its operations (such as because there's a superior net result, or non-BS is deemed intractable or is not understood)?
- weregiraffe 3y ago
  Keep the headcount under the Dunbar number and be the only boss.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    I think this is the only answer here. If you want to keep control you have to keep the number low enough to see all the pieces being played. This doesn't stop the game from playing, but if you are founder/CEO you have more ability to shape.
- esafak 3y ago
  Use tools to help workers estimate their contribution. Basically try to automate performance evaluation. You can't completely, but you can give bullshitters less opportunity to embellish. And like the other commenter said, keep the company as small as possible. That way, each person's contribution is more prominent.
  - neilv 3y ago
    > [...] productivity measurement [...] analytics [...] workers estimate their contribution [...] automate evaluation [...] Won't this inevitably lead to the same familiar BS? We already know that current tech workers start focusing on corporate BS metrics (e.g., FAANG interviews) while still in school. Even getting into the college was its own gauntlet of BS of resource-intensive hoop-jumping, questionable metrics, artifice, and self-promotion. CS students have already been told how to strategically pick their first job, how to work promotions, when to job-hop, to have no loyalty to project and team, to network, to self-promote, etc. By the time tech workers hit their first job, they've practically been engineered and filtered to be corporate BS machines. Part of the trick might be to un-train that. And to filter for people who can be un-trained.
strken 3y ago
While everything past 1 is cut-throat garbage, I'm not convinced that communicating what you've been doing is actually useless to the rest of the company. If you don't bullshit and just present your work then it's a good way for management to learn why projects went well/poorly, and a good way for you to organise your own thoughts and your stream of work. There's a basic level of self-promotion - demos, emails, talks to other engineers or users about how to use the new thing you made, retrospective write-ups of failed projects - below which you're not telling other people enough about what you did.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
incomingpain 3y ago
>"Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed. My last job, I was out of the office the vast majority of the time. I was working 50-60 hour weeks. There wasnt enough time to sell myself to my boss. I did work out of the office with sales guys and the ceo quite often so I did sell to them. They loved me. I would get back into the office and it was like everyone was caught up in a battle with each other. I tried my best to stay out of it, but you get drawn into that shit so quickly. Specifically, there was a senior sysadmin who knew nothing about networking at war with the network admin. I was the only other network admin, so naturally I get drawn into it. So I would help out there to help him avoid that conflict. Then on multiple occasions I did the network work, but the other network admin thought the sysadmin did and started saying how bad of a job he did. But it was me... Then the dreadful day where I was booked 4-6 weeks in advanced and there was work needed to be done. So they brought this other network admin in on my clients. Totally fine with me to have less on my plate. But then I get a phone call from my client telling me the network admin badmouthed me the entire time he was there. I got that recorded, provided it to HR. HR then said they cant just fire him because then I'd be the last network admin and im overloaded with work. They then let me in on something I shouldn't know. He also has another fireable offence being hateful toward a lesbian peer. She was awesome, no idea why he had a fued with her. So I left the harassment complaint with HR. But like 3 days later my boss who rarely speaks with me comes into my office to tell me that the other network admin went through my tickets and found many problems. I stopped him there, i told him that that other network admin is harassing me, that i'm making it official now and he has to do something about it. The next morning I got fired.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  That escalated quickly, if HR had a "file" on the other guy, what was the cause of firing? Did your manager like the other guy more? Also why does it matter that the peer was a lesbian?
  - incomingpain 3y ago

foobarian 3y ago

> success in the workplace Even that can be so many different things. Measured how - title? Number of underlings? Number of committees? Money?

lazide 3y ago
Money, and interesting problems to work on.
jvanderbot 3y ago
In my experience there's a few that are critical: Getting the funnest projects Getting reasonable flexibility in hours or days Not being the garbage disposal, meaning you are allowed to work on important, not necessarily urgent things Etc These do require politics and reputation management. But much of it is being reliable and asking for what you want, but doing what you're given. The rest, a non-negligible amount, comes from the active steps listed on GP.
gcp123 3y ago
Power, money, influence.
gumby 3y ago
What you consider success is up to you. The criteria you listed may matter to you or they may be other peoples’ criteria of success. Perhaps success for you is “known as important enough that I’m never on the layoff list”. And “get to spend time with my family; can avoid the death march programs”.

rayiner 3y ago

As an aside, I also think this explains the "bamboo ceiling" phenomenon. South asian culture is comfortable with self-promotion--my dad taught me most of these rules from a young age--in a way I get the impression east asian culture maybe looks down upon. That plays out when you look at who is in management. So if you're an engineer (from any background) who wants to move up, consider reading this book.

shermantanktop 3y ago
People who are constantly asserting their own value are definitely looked down upon by a whole lot of their peers. If that's what you mean by "comfortable with self-promotion," it's a double-edged sword.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Your peers don’t make promotion decisions.
  - esafak 3y ago
    Generally true, but not if they start their own companies.
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    Your bosses notice this too. EDIT: not you personally,sorry. In any case, I sit in promo discussions all the time and self-promoting behavior has the unintended effect of driving greater scrutiny.
- loeg 3y ago
  It's a showing vs telling thing, isn't it? Don't just tell everyone you're awesome; show people the cool/challenging work you've done.

WWLink 3y ago

> As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book. I feel like you can still gain a lot of respect by loving to code. For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits. You'll have your name in documentation. A lot of newer employees will remember your mentoring. That in itself all earns you valuable respect. Perhaps it's not the same as making sure the CEO knows that you made this piece of software, and did this thing, and that thing... but it does make its way there in a healthy organization.

reactordev 3y ago
“For one, if you're impactful enough your name will be all over your company's git repositories in commits” Or… you’re a busy body that likes to move files around and pretty things up leaving your name on the blame and making it look like you did a ton of work. All you did was open it/save it in VIM. Let’s not praise false indicators. Lines of code isn’t a good measurement of quality, nor is lines committed.
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  Not necessarily.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  The dude who probably had the most commits at our org was just chosen as the sacrificial lamb of the development team's share of cost cutting. Now I have no opinion of his work personally due to working separately and I generally thought highly of him as a person, but he was considered by some to be responsible for one of the most significant engineering f-ups in the history of the org. It is generally true that traumatic events resonate more deeply with people than positive ones. So you can quietly commit code all day everyday, but if your mistakes are more visible than your successes then you won't go far.
  - Jensson 3y ago

ThrowawayR2 3y ago

> "So, it seems office politics is not optional' is based on the unstated premise: 'if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about.'" The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. In those places, people are simply not allowed to not care about success or they'll get washed out because of low promotion velocity.

kylebenzle 3y ago
Was trying to find a way to reply to your comment about my book. But yes, I wrote a scifi novel about a computer hacker and occasionally post it here. Calling me a "shill" for trying to promote my book seems harsh. Have you ever tried to accomplish anything in your life? How would you suggest a new author gets their work outlet there?
- ThrowawayR2 3y ago
  Your account has been around long enough that you should be amply familiar with the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page, particularly the one about not using HN for promoting your own products. However, if you believe that your post has been unfairly flagged, you may contact the site moderators, whose email address is also in the guidelines, and make your case to them.
refulgentis 3y ago
This isn't true at all at Google (well, wasn't, 2016-2023). The value was/is in signalling you don't care. Large portions of employees are ye olde Ivy League grad / 2nd generation wealthy. More WASP values than hacker values.
AdieuToLogic 3y ago
Success != Promotions > The FAANGs and similar corporate environments and even academia have unhealthily competitive "up or out" cultures. If given a choice between "up or out" and "up" is not what one wants to do (for whatever reasons), then "out" is the only path which might lead to happiness, as "here" is not an option allowed.

NoPicklez 3y ago

As someone who started at a big four firm 8 years ago in cyber consulting, a lot of this rings true outside of programming. Especially the part about not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind. I was the worker who kept their head down, did good work and built good networks with people around me early on in my career. I got a lot of feedback through 1:1 discussions that said "You do great work and particular people know that, but other people with influence don't". You don't need to be a dick and push others around to show your value, but speaking up, being supporting of others openly and contributing in other areas help show people who you are. All of this needs to be wrapped up under leaders who support growth.

Exoristos 3y ago

How different is this from, Be an open and optimistic communicator, exploit opportunities vigorously as they arise, show confidence in your track record and your thinking -- for the good of yourself and the business? In other words, "office politics" does not have to be odious.

0ckpuppet 3y ago

some of these rules sound like euphemisms for backstabby lickspittle who's biggest expertise is resembing an expert.

bitwize 3y ago

> "Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed. The best business advice I ever received came in a dream in which All Might (from My Hero Academia) told me: "If you want to succeed and get recognized at work, you must let your company know: 'I am here!'"

jay_kyburz 3y ago

I cringe a little reading that list, but I do think people should spend time thinking about, and communicating their worth. I'm in games development, and many years ago when I worked in a big studio we used to do these Friday afternoon meetings where people would stand up and show off the best work they did during the week. The artists would show off a cool new character model, or a programmer might show how the pathfinder improved, or some nice new animation blending. I'm sure some people hated it, but I think it was really great for the whole team to sit around and congratulate each other for what was achieved that week.

jdksmdbtbdnmsm 3y ago

[flagged]

j-bos 3y ago

Agreed, for most of us those games are optional, But "good" people still need to play, and play well. When they don't we get 21st century Boeing

gmd63 3y ago

It's wild to me that folks seem to be unable to figure out how to fix rot at large companies when this is such a toxic set of trials for selecting people to put in power

bdw5204 3y ago
Society can't figure out how to stop the most toxic, corrupt and incompetent people from becoming high ranking politicians so it makes perfect sense for the same kind of rot to be endemic at large corporations. Rotten people gravitate towards power and most of those who aren't rotten are cowards who won't do anything to stop them because that'd risk their own careers or their own relationships with people naive enough to fall for the rotten people who are climbing towards the top. The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > The only thing that fixes this is for a critical mass of people to find the courage to stand up to rotten individuals who are powerful or likely to obtain power soon. Or you know, competition from new companies that will replace them. So companies can't rot too much, they have to continue to provide at least a bit of value or get replaced.
ramraj07 3y ago
The reason is more often than not it just cannot be fixed. Only way to fix it is to fundamentally start fresh.
- gmd63 3y ago
  I feel like with the level of surveillance we point at ad targeting, if we just steered it in the right direction it would provide at least some clue in sussing out who is power gaming versus people who are earnestly trying to do good for the team On a personal level I've developed a sense for when someone tends toward these behaviors, like when they downplay the contribution of someone who actually did work while promoting their "direction" which happened outside of recorded history

saghm 3y ago

> So, it seems "office politics is not optional" is based on the unstated premise: "if success in the workplace is the only thing you care about." > As for me, I've been a developer for 25 years and never wanted to go into management. I love my job because I love to code and I love learning new things. I'm 100% not the target audience for this book. Agreed. I think it's also a false dichotomy that you either have to "play the game" or "not play the game"; as most things, how much you want to "play the game" is a spectrum, and there's definitely merit in picking your battles. I ultimately don't care enough about most technical decisions in the products I've worked on to try to outmaneuver someone else who's trying to play politics, but if someone is actively politicking to try to affect _me_ specifically rather than the product, I'm not likely to stand by and let it happen rather than try to influence things. It's useful to be able to understand how office politics work from defensive perspective even if you don't plan to actively utilize it.

mlrtime 3y ago
I think some of the debate here is that politics is always happening to you, you have no choice but to play the game. You can be passive or active, you are just choosing to be passive but you're still playing. So, if you don't want to play it's still better to know the rules.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

neilv 3y ago

If you start a company, how do you avoid anyone trying to practice those 7 "rules" and BS-ify your company? When some individuals do try this BS, can you correct or eject them fast enough, or is it inevitable that they take over? Does BS-ification always start bottom-up, top-down, or it varies? Is there a point at which a company as an entity consciously chooses BS for its operations (such as because there's a superior net result, or non-BS is deemed intractable or is not understood)?

weregiraffe 3y ago
Keep the headcount under the Dunbar number and be the only boss.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  I think this is the only answer here. If you want to keep control you have to keep the number low enough to see all the pieces being played. This doesn't stop the game from playing, but if you are founder/CEO you have more ability to shape.
esafak 3y ago
Use tools to help workers estimate their contribution. Basically try to automate performance evaluation. You can't completely, but you can give bullshitters less opportunity to embellish. And like the other commenter said, keep the company as small as possible. That way, each person's contribution is more prominent.
- neilv 3y ago
  > [...] productivity measurement [...] analytics [...] workers estimate their contribution [...] automate evaluation [...] Won't this inevitably lead to the same familiar BS? We already know that current tech workers start focusing on corporate BS metrics (e.g., FAANG interviews) while still in school. Even getting into the college was its own gauntlet of BS of resource-intensive hoop-jumping, questionable metrics, artifice, and self-promotion. CS students have already been told how to strategically pick their first job, how to work promotions, when to job-hop, to have no loyalty to project and team, to network, to self-promote, etc. By the time tech workers hit their first job, they've practically been engineered and filtered to be corporate BS machines. Part of the trick might be to un-train that. And to filter for people who can be un-trained.

strken 3y ago

While everything past 1 is cut-throat garbage, I'm not convinced that communicating what you've been doing is actually useless to the rest of the company. If you don't bullshit and just present your work then it's a good way for management to learn why projects went well/poorly, and a good way for you to organise your own thoughts and your stream of work. There's a basic level of self-promotion - demos, emails, talks to other engineers or users about how to use the new thing you made, retrospective write-ups of failed projects - below which you're not telling other people enough about what you did.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

incomingpain 3y ago

>"Get out of your own way" means (in this book) that not showing or communicating your worth or value will leave you behind peers who do go out of their way to show their worth and value. I.e., If you keep your head down and just do good work, you won't get noticed. My last job, I was out of the office the vast majority of the time. I was working 50-60 hour weeks. There wasnt enough time to sell myself to my boss. I did work out of the office with sales guys and the ceo quite often so I did sell to them. They loved me. I would get back into the office and it was like everyone was caught up in a battle with each other. I tried my best to stay out of it, but you get drawn into that shit so quickly. Specifically, there was a senior sysadmin who knew nothing about networking at war with the network admin. I was the only other network admin, so naturally I get drawn into it. So I would help out there to help him avoid that conflict. Then on multiple occasions I did the network work, but the other network admin thought the sysadmin did and started saying how bad of a job he did. But it was me... Then the dreadful day where I was booked 4-6 weeks in advanced and there was work needed to be done. So they brought this other network admin in on my clients. Totally fine with me to have less on my plate. But then I get a phone call from my client telling me the network admin badmouthed me the entire time he was there. I got that recorded, provided it to HR. HR then said they cant just fire him because then I'd be the last network admin and im overloaded with work. They then let me in on something I shouldn't know. He also has another fireable offence being hateful toward a lesbian peer. She was awesome, no idea why he had a fued with her. So I left the harassment complaint with HR. But like 3 days later my boss who rarely speaks with me comes into my office to tell me that the other network admin went through my tickets and found many problems. I stopped him there, i told him that that other network admin is harassing me, that i'm making it official now and he has to do something about it. The next morning I got fired.

mlrtime 3y ago
That escalated quickly, if HR had a "file" on the other guy, what was the cause of firing? Did your manager like the other guy more? Also why does it matter that the peer was a lesbian?
- incomingpain 3y ago