And if you think there's no political games in your company then you're very naive. Your either not seeing it (which is bad for you) or its being hidden from you (which is also bad).

I suspect you are right, especially with the nature of our work.

If I employ a brick layer I can easily judge the quality and rate of their work, it's easy to compare with the guy I hired last week.

Contrast that to programming where there is no physical artefact, it's not like we can measure lines of code or numbers of files and derive some value, in most cases less lines of code is better.

People know this so instead of doing good work they start to play games to get ahead.

That's not to say a good leader can't fight against it but to think it's not there is naive.

I automatically reject any premise that contains the word "naive" or comes across as if me, by virtue of believing in the greater good or the good in all people, am just being overly optimistic, so I'll do my best to engage at the merit of the arguments here.

I have personally worked at at least 2 companies now that I would describe as "non political." This was achieved by having small, well-defined teams. One company had extremely clear paths for promotion and raises, the other had no framework whatsoever. In each case, the culture was defined every day by a manager - company 1 was the sales division lead, company 2 is the CEO who sits several desks to my right.

I not only think it's possible to have a non-political system, I've lived it twice. I think cynicism is easy, and that's why people call folks like me "naive."

Why do you believe there MUST be a political game?

Politics is how people organise and group. There are always ploys for control and expansion. Politics is practically biology, there is a pecking order and it is inescapable. What determines in and out group varies but it is always there if there are three or more people present.

I think what you're describing, I'd describe as "organization," rather than "politics." When I refer to "politics" in this conversation I mean something along the lines of "performing actions that are not company-goal-optimized, or, potentially detrimental to other employees, in order to advance oneself."

This is obviously true to me, but it doesn't answer the thing I've struggled with -- what exactly did they fuck up?

What can a higher-up do to prevent the political game?