The real power hierarchy is often nothing like the org chart. You need to reverse-engineer the ground truth of who is aligned with whom, what cliques/tribes exist, who has it in for whom etc.

And this is crucial: you must _NEVER_ let on that you are thinking this way -- you will be targeted as difficult, political, divisive, not a team player etc.

The hardest thing to come to terms with in a large org, esp for spectrum-y nerd dev types, is WYSINWYG. No one is allowed to admit that the place is toxic with politics -- until perhaps you are best friends and really trust each other, and then only when drunk, and even then half the time your "bestie" will use this off-the-record talk against you.

It's kind of like the first rule of Fight Club.