There are politics no matter where you are. Whenever two or three are gathered together, there is politics. Politics is just what people call interpersonal dynamics when they don't like a particular setup. The bottom line is that people all have their set of goals, and if you are lucky, your goals, their goals, and the goals of the company are well aligned. If they aren't the question is can you find a way of changing the situation so that they are better aligned?

This applies to being a leader in a volunteer organization, or being a leader in an open source project --- or being a leader in a corporate environment. In my experience the last is often actually easier and simpler than the first two!

As far as your goals are concerned, you should be clear to yourself what they are. For me, it wasn't primarily about the money. Sure, I'm at Google now, and I'm enjoying the compensation --- but I spent nine years at MIT before I moved on to VA Linux Systems (and doubled my salary, before equity --- most of which ended up being worthless).

If you know what your goals and desires are, the next trick is to understand what others' goals and desires are, and trying to help them achieve their goals while also making yours a reality. This is true whether you are working for yourself, or working at a big company. (And at a big company, sometimes it's a matter of finding the right team. Don't assume that just because you had a lousy time on one team that the characteristics of your situation are universal across the entire company.)

It's definitely much worse in bigger companies, I see it in my customers all the time. Small organisations can't afford the sort of bullshit that goes on in a big business.

And probably the other way around, too. You can't have thousands of engineers without those politics and cultures that people will try to game. Google's ideas on how to structure promotions were great (removing manager bias and just judging by achievements). But once your organisation grows it's impossible to keep it in a way that's impossible to game. I've yet to hear of a large corporation where promotions are done fairly and talent is always recognised.

>>Politics is just what people call interpersonal dynamics when they don't like a particular setup.

No. Politics is when 1 among the 3 people, wants more than his share using all means possible.

I thing I wonder is what role lifestyle factors play.

If you're making 200k on your own terms vs 250 at Google, I wonder who's better off. At that level of income, things like how stressful your work is, how interested in it you are, the length of your commute, etc. seem to matter more than earning another 50k of income.

Obviously everyone has their own circumstances but I think the obsession with earning as much cash salary as possible seems a little myopic.

The difference between Google and others is far more than 25% when you factor in total compensation. At least in my area, the difference between Google and the big players is more like 50-60%.

So it is a significant trade off.

I'd choose a $200k job that gives purpose and makes me happy over a $300k job where that's not the case. At those levels where you're well off but still have to work (can't retire after 5-10 years from the salary earned), the increased happiness of 50% is often not that much.

If that works for you, sure. But most would seriously weigh that trade off. With another 70k / year after taxes you could retire way earlier and do whatever you want.

This is a false tradeoff.

Early retirement is almost always an option for middle-class or better Americans. It's just a question of how much pain you want to put up with in terms of housing, lifestyle, where you want to live, whether you want great education for your kids, etc.

I used to agree with your comment but don't anymore. I have enough money at this point to earn 10s of K/year investing in real estate or doing something else. I don't because I like working in tech, being part of a team, using my education and talents, and generally working on making the world a better place.

I don't really want to "do whatever I want".

These guys are right: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1930-mojito-island-is-a-mirag...

Seems like you already earned your nut. Those that haven't might want to take that Google tradeoff, esp. if young and unencumbered, so that can get to where you're at.

Your middle-class also seems to be a bit different than my middle-class, especially in cities where jobs are.

The message you're responding to is literaly saying that you need to play the politics game in small startups as well. Perhaps even more so since you don't have clearly defined process of goals that lead to promotions and pay raises.

> Perhaps even more so

Wasn't my experience. Of course, YMMV.

> since you don't have clearly defined process of goals that lead to promotions and pay raises.

Looks like Google does have defined process. Did it help the OP? Doesn't seem so. Defined processes are good if they're defined with your goals in mind. If they are defined explicitly to prevent you from reaching your goals, they'd be only an impediment, and one that you'll fail to overcome, as "this is our defined process, we know it doesn't work in your particular case, but we can't start special-casing people, so you'll have to take one for the team here".

And in my experience, it much depends on industry. There are truthfully awful places to work. Google doesn’t sound like it qualifies for that rung. I would be willing to bet many startups do.

>There are literally thousands of smaller places you can work for/in/with, some of them do pretty cool things.

List them. Especially the ones where you do not need to sudy for several algorithmic puzzles.

I don't think anybody does puzzles anymore. It's like 2000s thing. Are there still puzzle interview places left?

The last time I was interviewed by phone at Amazon, I was asked to write a binary tree to a file. Time given: 30 minutes. Does that count as a puzzle? Did lot's on exercises on binary trees before but was not prepared for that question.

Nah, that sounds pretty simple - you just need to know how to walk a binary tree (basic knowledge) and how to write a string to a file (even more basic knowledge) - provided binary tree stores strings (and with right serializer, everything stores strings). Unless I am missing something. Don't think this qualifies as a puzzle. Puzzle would be something that requires non-trivial knowledge or exceptional insight to solve.

OK then do it on the phone with the interviewer looking at you as you're typing and your brain has suddenly blanked. I've been coding since I was 9 years old, have a massive (relatively) side project with a couple hundred users, have shipped multiple projects in multiple jobs, and I know what a binary tree is and how to traverse one, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to do it under those conditions. I absolutely hate interview questions where they make you code on the spot. Just look at my Github, I swear I wrote that code.

That's not a puzzle, though. A puzzle would be something barely related to computer science, like "How can I find which ball out of 9 is heavier weighing them twice on a two-sided scale?"

I think this is a bit pedant. It's fairly common for developers to call questions like these puzzles.

Basic algorithmic knowledge questions are not puzzles, and whoever is calling them that is wrong. Those questions still can be stressful, especially for people that don't do well in interview environment, but puzzle is something else. Puzzle is something that requires some non-trivial insight or trick to solve, usually one that the person has no experience with and it is not obvious even for a person with the knowledge of the basics. That's why they are puzzles - they are "puzzling", which the dictionary defines as "confusing" or "baffling".

I forgot to mention the key part of the task. The key was to constitute the tree back by reading it from the file. The writing part is trivial, the reconstitution part is not. Try it. While not impossible for a decent programmer half an hour is not sufficient who does not deal with binary trees ona daily basis.