5 ms·

"Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosin

"Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room." Well, it's a decent article, but that paragraph does not match my experience. In my experience, it's typically because there's a non-technical reason why the technical decision was done badly: 1) devs, or their supervisors, or both want Hot New Thing on their resumes 2) in order to get Good New Thing purchased, the Old Bad Thing must be shown to be unworkable, so saving Old Bad Thing with a clever solution is undesirable 3) org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword, whether it makes sense here or not None of these are reasons that I like, but they are also reasons that are very convincing to most people, especially high-ranking decision makers. I don't mean to suggest that the articles points like "Building relationships before you need them", etc. aren't a good idea. Just don't expect it to have a very high success rate in winning debates about "terrible technical decisions".

brikym 1y ago
Exactly right. I see a shitty feature I say "someone got promoted for that".
bongodongobob 1y ago
Agreed. In my experience, a lot of this has been the XY problem. C level has a legitimate need or problem, they think they've solved it by asking for technology Z and the people who actually know the systems aren't consulted. When they do push back, it's seen as not following orders, so now we have to shoehorn in some dumb solution that doesn't fit in with the rest of the env. It works, so leadership doesn't understand why it's a problem.
eawgewag 1y ago
I think the article is arguing that if you build the relationship, you can involve yourself into these conversations early enough to direct them the way that your idea would go. In your cases, for example: 1. Recognizing early enough that this Hot New Thing incentive is here and figuring out how your Good New Thing can live with the Hot New Thing 2. Helping show the Old Bad Thing is unworkable for your Good New Thing 3. Understanding that the org cares about New Buzzword and framing your work under those pretenses.
- some_guy_nobel 1y ago
  What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?
  - eawgewag 1y ago
    I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just need to recognize what you can benefit from.
    - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
      Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up."
      - eawgewag 1y ago
        Politics involves understanding the hierarchy though. And understanding when you are overruled. If the hierarchy is saying "it's time for GenAI", you have the option to participate in a way that raises your profile and positively influences the company (involving politics), if you hate GenAI so much you can leave, or you can stay silently and opt out of the process. These are all choices. Personally I'm fine with my VCs making strategic decisions since they trust me to make technical decisions. So we can do GenAI, we'll just do it in a way that works and is sustainable for the codebase. You should realize that as a technical person your domain is not business strategy. Similarly I'd be shocked if any VC ever came in and told me "to use PostgreSQL" or some other nonsense. If you want to be the person deciding what we build, go into Product.
        some_guy_nobel 1y ago
        I will repeat again, this is in direct opposition to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up." Given that, I'm not sure what your message is in response to. I will say that 'learn to parcipate in the hierarchy' and 'everything is a choice, just quit!' are hardly solutions at all, and read more as truisms. I'll add that I'm not sure what VCs have to do with anything here, though as someone who formally took VC funding, I wouldn't want them making technical or strategic decisions on my behalf, and I suspect the majority of founders (and others on my cap table) would agree.
citizenpaul 1y ago
As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and signed paperwork weeks before so we all were just wasting our time on something that had been decided unilaterally.
- cjs_ac 1y ago
  The golfist outside the company played the political game better than the people inside the company.
- johnfn 1y ago
  I feel that a lot of the times conversations around this topic end up with some anecdote like "well, playing politics doesn't actually work because I work at a dysfunctional company where decisions are made by morons". If you have a C-suite that makes decisions based on golf games, this advice is not for you. You have a different set of problems. You should absolutely address those problems. But that doesn't mean that this advice isn't for anyone, and coming and telling everyone that the advice is always meaningless isn't accurate. It's like two people discussing how to handle difficult conversations in a romantic relationship, and a third guy comes in and says "this conversation is irrelevant because every time I date someone they cheat on me". I'm sorry you're dealing with that problem, but it is not really related to the topic at hand.
  - harperlee 1y ago
    I'd add that in my experience, when you are close to the action, the cynic "golfing nepotism" take is usually missing a point of view that is far more rational; just far from the developer/architect that is dismissing the decision. Perhaps not technically optimal, or fair, or even legal - but even so, more akin to "I know this person delivered in the past, and the alternative is also good on paper" or "I really need to save my ass" (nobody got fired by choosing IBM) or "business-wise, this technical recommendation I don't really care for". Perhaps I'm optimistic but in general I don't really think (or want to believe) that people are quick to wage their careers on an acquaintance that is clearly selling something as part of their job, unless the stakes are really not so high from their point of view. Then again, open a newspaper :)
artursapek 1y ago
the most common I've seen is "person in charge of Project That Makes No Sense is the most aggressive and willing to do deceitful things to make themselves look good"
scarface_74 1y ago
I as a self interested actor as we all are see nothing wrong with: 1) Since around 2008 I’ve had 8 jobs after staying at my second job for nine years. Whether I was laid off or chose to get another job because of salary compression and inversion, being able to get a job quickly - and it’s never taken me more than a month even in 2023 and last year - was partially because at now 51, I have made damn sure I stay up to date with real world use of the “latest hotness”. 2) see #1 3) if you are a VC backed company, your shining light is not “make a good product”. It’s “the exit” and shortly afterwards a blog post about “our amazing journey” where they announce the product is going to be shut down. The goal of politics in the office is not to do “the right thing”. It’s to stay in alignment with the people who control your paycheck and to make sure you can keep exchanging money for labor when time comes to her another job.
- xpe 1y ago
  Yes, recognizing reality and the incentive structure is powerful. Then one can make smart tradeoffs. Most people want to stay in apparent alignment with their employer to advance. But sometimes perfect alignment isn’t optimal for what you want to do next. Some examples: Some might want to work on an interesting project with a new technology, even though it isn’t a recognized fit for your company. Some prefer to build strong and trusted relationships for referrals later. Some people will pursue aims that are to the detriment of their company. * It is wise to recognize the diversity of goals in people around you. * Getting great alignment is not easy. Not with people, not with highly capable intelligent agents trained with gradient descent that will probably operate outside their training distribution. Next time you think a powerful AI agent will do everything in your interests, ask yourself if your employee will do everything you want, just as you would want it.
- brk 1y ago
  This guy businesses. Big decisions are almost always made on factors that are more relationship based than technical based at the end of the day. Many highly technical people despise management, MBAs, and anything in that orbit. This is understandable, but leads to a lot of frustration. If you truly want to guide major decisions you are going to be more effective at the top of the stack than the bottom. Every tier has trade offs, and you are almost always having to sell some part of your soul to truly move up. Like it or not, most technical companies these days are managed to short terms goals and payouts. The C Suite, investors, etc are all just there for a payday. The actual product or anything else is just a detail in the goal of collecting commas. If you recognize this, you have a better chance of managing your own expectations at whatever level you are in the org. If you spend your time fighting for something that is not truly the goal of the company you will tend to have a bad time overall.
MountDoom 1y ago
> "terrible technical decisions". Another point worth bringing up is that sometimes, that stuff doesn't matter. I see so many engineers get hopelessly invested in technical debates that are, honestly, just silly: it's often better for the company to get something barely-good-enough done quickly than to flesh out the "optimal" design over the course of weeks or months, and over the dead bodies of people who have a different opinion about vi-versus-emacs. And even if you accumulate tech debt, it is sometimes a wise decision to pay it back later, when you (hopefully) have more money and time. So, I'd add "pick your battles wisely" to the list of tips.
- dongecko 1y ago
  Exactly my point of view. For the most part I do not root for my preferred technology, but rather try to inform my powers about the caveats I see. This way at least the right aspects to check have a chance to enter the debates above my payroll.
mschuster91 1y ago
There's also option 4: CxO was out golfing with some rich friends that happen to own <vendor of buzzword software> and/or is getting kickbacks, so now we have to use <crap buzzword software> instead of <old solution> or just not using it at all because what the software offers isn't needed, but CxO doesn't know because he's out golfing, banging hookers and snorting coke all freaking day. And yes, this kind of shit happens regularly - sometimes, people even get busted for it like that Netflix executive who got kickbacks from, amongst others, Netskope [1]. Let's be real: no matter how good you are at networking - unless you come from Old Money or have a wildly successful exit under your belt, you are not joining the club of elite morons that actually pulls the strings. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executive-sentenced-30-months-bribes-and-kickbacks-netflix-vendors https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...
wat10000 1y ago
And even if it was because the right people weren't in the room, that's still a leadership failure. Part of the job of those decision-makers is to get the right people into the room With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics. Everything this article describes as "good politics" is definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building relationships? That's just meeting interesting coworkers. Understanding the real incentives? That's keeping the big picture in mind, a standard requirement for any engineer. Managing up effectively? A good manager will treat you like the expert that you are and that happens automatically. Creating win-win situations? That's that big picture thing again. Being visible? Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done? I hate politics. I do all of those "good politics" things and I enjoy all of it. It might technically be "politics" but it's not what we think of when we say the word. This article boils down to a semantic argument. They want to carve out a section of the job and put it under the label of "politics" when most of us would not put it there. That label may be right, it may be wrong, but I don't really care. It's just not an interesting argument. I think this article would be a lot better if it dropped the P word entirely and just explained why and how you should do the "good" things it lists.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  > but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer [...] Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done? Certainly many would prefer to just enter flow state and work on their craft, work the wood with the chisel (=do the engineering work), etc. It is of course not a good strategy in reality, and it doesn't matter what people "want", but let's at least admit that plenty of people don't enjoy having to interact a lot. People-oriented vs thing-oriented.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    I know that plenty of people don't like doing presentations and writeups and such, but just telling your coworkers about whatever cool thing you've done seems to be pretty much universally enjoyed in my experience.
roarcher 1y ago
> org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword, whether it makes sense here or not Oh lord, I have seen some nonsense built because some prospective investor wanted to see us "do something with AI" lest we be "left behind" somehow.
- rossdavidh 1y ago
  The thing is, from the point of view of getting investment money, it is probably the "right call". It's just not the business of making technology decisions, it's the business of making technology cosplay. Not my business.
  - roarcher 1y ago
    Oh I agree, in that sense these features fulfill their true purpose, which is to assure some clueless VC that his money will be at the forefront of innovation or some hogwash. But they give zero value to the end users, who largely ignore them. Maybe even negative value, considering the opportunity cost.
    - rossdavidh 1y ago
      As others have said before me, "the hype IS the product".
- firesteelrain 1y ago
  I am sure you could have came up with a legit use case for AI
  - roarcher 1y ago
    You come up with solutions to use cases. Inventing a use case to justify a solution is backwards and by definition not legitimate.
    - firesteelrain 1y ago
loeg 1y ago
C-suite only get credit for changes, so they are incentivized to make changes at random and hope some of them turn out to look good in hindsight.
- skirmish 1y ago
  As I heard once, in a large company VPs are rated by the number of reorgs they initiated per year. That explained so much insanity I have seen: a project gets moved to different directors, then after 5 reorgs ends up in its original place. Just large company things, VPs have to show "impact" where there is none.
tonyhart7 1y ago
Yeah, this is ignore the fact that human is not taking all rational decision all the time more often that not its based on feeling

brikym 1y ago

Exactly right. I see a shitty feature I say "someone got promoted for that".

bongodongobob 1y ago

Agreed. In my experience, a lot of this has been the XY problem. C level has a legitimate need or problem, they think they've solved it by asking for technology Z and the people who actually know the systems aren't consulted. When they do push back, it's seen as not following orders, so now we have to shoehorn in some dumb solution that doesn't fit in with the rest of the env. It works, so leadership doesn't understand why it's a problem.

eawgewag 1y ago

I think the article is arguing that if you build the relationship, you can involve yourself into these conversations early enough to direct them the way that your idea would go. In your cases, for example: 1. Recognizing early enough that this Hot New Thing incentive is here and figuring out how your Good New Thing can live with the Hot New Thing 2. Helping show the Old Bad Thing is unworkable for your Good New Thing 3. Understanding that the org cares about New Buzzword and framing your work under those pretenses.

some_guy_nobel 1y ago
What about RTO? New 'ai-first' genai initiatives?
- eawgewag 1y ago
  I mean sometimes you are outruled. That's part of recognizing politics, in my opinion. If your VCs want you to do GenAI and you think it's dumb, you are overruled. But you can still benefit from this in a lot of ways. You just need to recognize what you can benefit from.
  - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
    Sure,though this stands in contrast to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up."
    - eawgewag 1y ago
      Politics involves understanding the hierarchy though. And understanding when you are overruled. If the hierarchy is saying "it's time for GenAI", you have the option to participate in a way that raises your profile and positively influences the company (involving politics), if you hate GenAI so much you can leave, or you can stay silently and opt out of the process. These are all choices. Personally I'm fine with my VCs making strategic decisions since they trust me to make technical decisions. So we can do GenAI, we'll just do it in a way that works and is sustainable for the codebase. You should realize that as a technical person your domain is not business strategy. Similarly I'd be shocked if any VC ever came in and told me "to use PostgreSQL" or some other nonsense. If you want to be the person deciding what we build, go into Product.
      - some_guy_nobel 1y ago
        I will repeat again, this is in direct opposition to the author's thesis: "It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up." Given that, I'm not sure what your message is in response to. I will say that 'learn to parcipate in the hierarchy' and 'everything is a choice, just quit!' are hardly solutions at all, and read more as truisms. I'll add that I'm not sure what VCs have to do with anything here, though as someone who formally took VC funding, I wouldn't want them making technical or strategic decisions on my behalf, and I suspect the majority of founders (and others on my cap table) would agree.

citizenpaul 1y ago

As usual HN comments are more on point than the article. I've lost count of how many times something was proposed and rejected by everyone in the chain except the C-suite. Then the C-suite overrode the process decisions basically because they played golf with someone outside the company. I was once even part of a vendor assessment that was rejected and it turned out that the CEO had already given the green light and signed paperwork weeks before so we all were just wasting our time on something that had been decided unilaterally.

cjs_ac 1y ago
The golfist outside the company played the political game better than the people inside the company.
johnfn 1y ago
I feel that a lot of the times conversations around this topic end up with some anecdote like "well, playing politics doesn't actually work because I work at a dysfunctional company where decisions are made by morons". If you have a C-suite that makes decisions based on golf games, this advice is not for you. You have a different set of problems. You should absolutely address those problems. But that doesn't mean that this advice isn't for anyone, and coming and telling everyone that the advice is always meaningless isn't accurate. It's like two people discussing how to handle difficult conversations in a romantic relationship, and a third guy comes in and says "this conversation is irrelevant because every time I date someone they cheat on me". I'm sorry you're dealing with that problem, but it is not really related to the topic at hand.
- harperlee 1y ago
  I'd add that in my experience, when you are close to the action, the cynic "golfing nepotism" take is usually missing a point of view that is far more rational; just far from the developer/architect that is dismissing the decision. Perhaps not technically optimal, or fair, or even legal - but even so, more akin to "I know this person delivered in the past, and the alternative is also good on paper" or "I really need to save my ass" (nobody got fired by choosing IBM) or "business-wise, this technical recommendation I don't really care for". Perhaps I'm optimistic but in general I don't really think (or want to believe) that people are quick to wage their careers on an acquaintance that is clearly selling something as part of their job, unless the stakes are really not so high from their point of view. Then again, open a newspaper :)

artursapek 1y ago

the most common I've seen is "person in charge of Project That Makes No Sense is the most aggressive and willing to do deceitful things to make themselves look good"

scarface_74 1y ago

I as a self interested actor as we all are see nothing wrong with: 1) Since around 2008 I’ve had 8 jobs after staying at my second job for nine years. Whether I was laid off or chose to get another job because of salary compression and inversion, being able to get a job quickly - and it’s never taken me more than a month even in 2023 and last year - was partially because at now 51, I have made damn sure I stay up to date with real world use of the “latest hotness”. 2) see #1 3) if you are a VC backed company, your shining light is not “make a good product”. It’s “the exit” and shortly afterwards a blog post about “our amazing journey” where they announce the product is going to be shut down. The goal of politics in the office is not to do “the right thing”. It’s to stay in alignment with the people who control your paycheck and to make sure you can keep exchanging money for labor when time comes to her another job.

xpe 1y ago
Yes, recognizing reality and the incentive structure is powerful. Then one can make smart tradeoffs. Most people want to stay in apparent alignment with their employer to advance. But sometimes perfect alignment isn’t optimal for what you want to do next. Some examples: Some might want to work on an interesting project with a new technology, even though it isn’t a recognized fit for your company. Some prefer to build strong and trusted relationships for referrals later. Some people will pursue aims that are to the detriment of their company. * It is wise to recognize the diversity of goals in people around you. * Getting great alignment is not easy. Not with people, not with highly capable intelligent agents trained with gradient descent that will probably operate outside their training distribution. Next time you think a powerful AI agent will do everything in your interests, ask yourself if your employee will do everything you want, just as you would want it.
brk 1y ago
This guy businesses. Big decisions are almost always made on factors that are more relationship based than technical based at the end of the day. Many highly technical people despise management, MBAs, and anything in that orbit. This is understandable, but leads to a lot of frustration. If you truly want to guide major decisions you are going to be more effective at the top of the stack than the bottom. Every tier has trade offs, and you are almost always having to sell some part of your soul to truly move up. Like it or not, most technical companies these days are managed to short terms goals and payouts. The C Suite, investors, etc are all just there for a payday. The actual product or anything else is just a detail in the goal of collecting commas. If you recognize this, you have a better chance of managing your own expectations at whatever level you are in the org. If you spend your time fighting for something that is not truly the goal of the company you will tend to have a bad time overall.

MountDoom 1y ago

> "terrible technical decisions". Another point worth bringing up is that sometimes, that stuff doesn't matter. I see so many engineers get hopelessly invested in technical debates that are, honestly, just silly: it's often better for the company to get something barely-good-enough done quickly than to flesh out the "optimal" design over the course of weeks or months, and over the dead bodies of people who have a different opinion about vi-versus-emacs. And even if you accumulate tech debt, it is sometimes a wise decision to pay it back later, when you (hopefully) have more money and time. So, I'd add "pick your battles wisely" to the list of tips.

dongecko 1y ago
Exactly my point of view. For the most part I do not root for my preferred technology, but rather try to inform my powers about the caveats I see. This way at least the right aspects to check have a chance to enter the debates above my payroll.

mschuster91 1y ago

There's also option 4: CxO was out golfing with some rich friends that happen to own <vendor of buzzword software> and/or is getting kickbacks, so now we have to use <crap buzzword software> instead of <old solution> or just not using it at all because what the software offers isn't needed, but CxO doesn't know because he's out golfing, banging hookers and snorting coke all freaking day. And yes, this kind of shit happens regularly - sometimes, people even get busted for it like that Netflix executive who got kickbacks from, amongst others, Netskope [1]. Let's be real: no matter how good you are at networking - unless you come from Old Money or have a wildly successful exit under your belt, you are not joining the club of elite morons that actually pulls the strings. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executive-sentenced-30-months-bribes-and-kickbacks-netflix-vendors https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...

wat10000 1y ago

And even if it was because the right people weren't in the room, that's still a leadership failure. Part of the job of those decision-makers is to get the right people into the room With good leadership, politics won't feel like politics. Everything this article describes as "good politics" is definitely good stuff to do, but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer. Building relationships? That's just meeting interesting coworkers. Understanding the real incentives? That's keeping the big picture in mind, a standard requirement for any engineer. Managing up effectively? A good manager will treat you like the expert that you are and that happens automatically. Creating win-win situations? That's that big picture thing again. Being visible? Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done? I hate politics. I do all of those "good politics" things and I enjoy all of it. It might technically be "politics" but it's not what we think of when we say the word. This article boils down to a semantic argument. They want to carve out a section of the job and put it under the label of "politics" when most of us would not put it there. That label may be right, it may be wrong, but I don't really care. It's just not an interesting argument. I think this article would be a lot better if it dropped the P word entirely and just explained why and how you should do the "good" things it lists.

bonoboTP 1y ago
> but none of it should feel like politics to your typical "I hate politics" engineer [...] Who doesn't like to share the cool stuff they've done? Certainly many would prefer to just enter flow state and work on their craft, work the wood with the chisel (=do the engineering work), etc. It is of course not a good strategy in reality, and it doesn't matter what people "want", but let's at least admit that plenty of people don't enjoy having to interact a lot. People-oriented vs thing-oriented.
- wat10000 1y ago
  I know that plenty of people don't like doing presentations and writeups and such, but just telling your coworkers about whatever cool thing you've done seems to be pretty much universally enjoyed in my experience.

roarcher 1y ago

> org needs a system using New Buzzword, to show to VC's or others, and this is the opportunity to use New Buzzword, whether it makes sense here or not Oh lord, I have seen some nonsense built because some prospective investor wanted to see us "do something with AI" lest we be "left behind" somehow.

rossdavidh 1y ago
The thing is, from the point of view of getting investment money, it is probably the "right call". It's just not the business of making technology decisions, it's the business of making technology cosplay. Not my business.
- roarcher 1y ago
  Oh I agree, in that sense these features fulfill their true purpose, which is to assure some clueless VC that his money will be at the forefront of innovation or some hogwash. But they give zero value to the end users, who largely ignore them. Maybe even negative value, considering the opportunity cost.
  - rossdavidh 1y ago
    As others have said before me, "the hype IS the product".
firesteelrain 1y ago
I am sure you could have came up with a legit use case for AI
- roarcher 1y ago
  You come up with solutions to use cases. Inventing a use case to justify a solution is backwards and by definition not legitimate.
  - firesteelrain 1y ago

loeg 1y ago

C-suite only get credit for changes, so they are incentivized to make changes at random and hope some of them turn out to look good in hindsight.

skirmish 1y ago
As I heard once, in a large company VPs are rated by the number of reorgs they initiated per year. That explained so much insanity I have seen: a project gets moved to different directors, then after 5 reorgs ends up in its original place. Just large company things, VPs have to show "impact" where there is none.

tonyhart7 1y ago

Yeah, this is ignore the fact that human is not taking all rational decision all the time more often that not its based on feeling