> Shielding non-senior engineers from organizational politics not just stymies their growth, but also hinders their visibility of the skills they’ll eventually

> Shielding non-senior engineers from organizational politics not just stymies their growth, but also hinders their visibility of the skills they’ll eventually need to learn the hard way. I don’t agree with this at all. Some people aren’t cut out for dealing with politics and if you don’t help them out they will just get burned out and quit (or, even worse, stay around with low performance). Moreover at my employer we even shield some senior engineers from politics because they are best served to focus on deep technical problems. I don’t want my AI specialists worried about random bullshit, I want them focused on actually doing innovative work. Of course that doesn’t apply to everyone—we need some people to deal with the politics that inevitably arise. But that’s why I dislike this sort of one size fits all advice.