Embrace the politics

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This is the fourth in a series of articles I am calling "Machiavelli for software engineers". In these I cover topics that are related to power and influence in organizations. The full introduction to the series can be found here.

Many years ago, I was sitting in the weekly manager meeting of our group. After a few exchanges, one of my colleagues turned to me and said: “Oh my God. You make it seem like you are not political at all, but in fact you are the most political guy in this building!” I thought it was a very nice compliment…

Politics gets a very bad name, both at a national level and inside companies, but I think this is (mostly) undeserved. At its core, politics is just the name of the process we use to allocate resources and make decisions. Like any human process, it can be done well and it can be done badly. It can be done in service of a greater goal and it can be abused for selfish purposes. But for better or for worse: If you want to have any influence, if you want to be successful, if you want other people to align with your plans, you have to be a politician.

The absent minded observer only becomes aware of politics if there is bad politics going on. Bad politics is usually accompanied by conspiring against people behind their backs, double crossing, promises being broken, and decisions being made that are sometimes incomprehensible or only in the interest of a happy few. But if there is good politics going on, people usually don’t see it because the operators are so skillful that things just seem to happen organically. Trust me, nothing in a group of people happens organically. If the right things seem to happen automatically, fluidly, and without any resistance, then somebody has been applying lots of lube in all the right places.

Like it or not, you work in an organization of humans and so you are part of an intricate network of influence that is trying to make the organization move in some direction, hopefully forward. A lot of us are in denial about this fact. For instance, I had this colleague who used to say: “I work with machines, because the alternative is that I work with morons.” But even he was part of a group that tried to get things done in an organization of many groups that had conflicting priorities and where not all groups' desires could be realized. Ignoring all these people and their priorities is bound to get you into trouble.

Now please don’t get the impression that I am some kind of zen master in the art of company politics. I decidedly am not and that has gotten me into a fair amount of trouble at times. I am often either not interested or too caught up in the nitty gritty of the here and now to see the bigger picture. Unfortunately, that bigger picture sometimes has the nasty habit of coming around and biting me in the arse.

Here is an example: In some big tech firm I used to work at, we had lived through a time of uncoordinated growth in which managers started up teams wherever they could hire, without paying much attention to things like geographical co-location with other teams. This had worked well, sort of, but eventually some new directors were appointed and they started a process of team consolidation across geographies. During a company event I had met a manager from one of our acquisitions and he told me that he had just moved to Paris (because: fun!) and was trying to set up a team there. “Great”, I said, “we have no teams in Paris yet, but I regularly come across profiles of candidates in France that cannot or do not want to relocate. I will happily send them your way, help you interview, and do whatever I can to assist you in setting up that team.” That’s me, always trying to be helpful.

Unfortunately, I had kinda missed the whole geographical consolidation drive. Or, better, I had foolishly decided to ignore it, wont as I am to live in generation N-1 of the organization. Eventually there came an ukase from on high that this team was not going to be set up in Paris and that this manager could be in Paris all he wanted, but the team could start in <some other city> (where we already had a presence). In the meantime, I had heard through the grapevine that the executives were pretty unhappy with my attempts to “sabotage” or “circumvent” their careful consolidation strategy. This in turn meant that I had to walk the road to Canossa and apologize in the hope that they wouldn’t fire me. Not my finest moment, but such is the cost of not paying attention to the political currents around you.

Engineers often think that their amazing technical work speaks for itself and that other people should align with them because of the obvious righteousness of their cause and the overall technical excellence on display. This is a pretty naive view of the world. In fact, your good work is nothing but an entry ticket to the negotiation table. If you don’t do good work, you’re probably not even going to be in the conversation. With your good work, other people might be willing to talk to you, but be prepared to do something for them as well. Politics is a game of give and take. If you want other people to help you, you must help them in something that they care about. Unfortunately, they usually don’t clearly spell out what it is they want, leaving that for you to divine. I can recommend the Galaxy Tarot app…

If you do not understand why certain decisions are made, you probably do not have enough clue about what is going on. In other words: You have not followed the political news and now you are underinformed about the other player’s priorities, goals, and motives. I often speak to people who are complaining about decisions that are being made in the management layers above them that seem silly, stupid, or counterproductive. Of course, incompetence clearly is a thing that exists in the universe, but instead of immediately assuming incompetence, I always invite people to analyze the situation in terms of the (perhaps unknown) mission that the higher ups have gotten from their governors. Even senior executives have OKRs and theirs might say things like: “Get this unruly office in line”, “reduce the amount of duplicate work in the organization”, or just simply “reduce the amount of time spent on support tickets by 5%”. Unfortunately, the higher up in the organization you are, the blunter the tools that you have available. The CEO of Google cannot drive a more efficient code review process, but he can lay off 5% of people and hope that the increase in work pressure will achieve his finer-grained goals.

If you want to have any hope of influencing the goings on, you must do so from a position of information, which includes understanding all competing forces and the constraints. If you are going to suggest a plan or a change, you can only hope to get away with suggestions that are palatable for everyone involved. Your manager or director is not going to get back to their manager saying: “Well, I talked to Jos and he says X, Y, and Z, and so I cannot deliver on the OKR you gave me.” That is just not going to happen. Ultimately, everyone is in the game for themselves.

I have friends who do not follow any politics because it does not interest them. In most organizations that is a mistake. You might not be interested in politics, but you are subject to the outcome of politics regardless. The game is being played, even if you decide not to take part and not to follow the play-by-play. You are either part of the conversation, or you are on the menu. Where would you rather be?