I said just yesterday to someone that there are always politics, it’s only a question of how formalized they are. The less formalized, the more the workplace is probably being bent to the whims of the best manipulators.

So when someone says there are no politics, they are either clueless or pulling the strings themselves.

Same goes with the claim of “no ego” workplaces. OK, either you have only robots working there, or that’s how you treat your humans. But it’s an admission that they can’t or won’t deal with real human problems. In a thought labor industry (I’m a software developer) this is disastrous; imagine a construction company with no protocols for preventing or dealing with physical injury.