I worry this whole comment chain is celebrating a coping mechanism of troglodytic engineering, that the ideal is to shape artisanal code-crystals undisturbed in a cave. We all wish there was a simple meritocracy of crystal-fashioning, with the master diamondsmiths sat at the top. If only, enough said.

The political savviness so scorned by the in-the-trenches coder might actually be communication, capacity for broader context, strategic foresight, emotional intelligence to debug and optimise teams, among the many other skills required to execute a product/project beyond programming. And good leads will pluck coders showing these skills out of the engineering corps and set them on a TPM track.

Perhaps it is only rarely the case. But it seems fair to observe that it is gentler on the ego to cast these rare and hard-earned skills as “playing the game”, PM mumbled-jumbo, etc.

At the same time, operators in bad faith tend to deploy just these skills, and a bad experience can incline one to wash their hands of it all and crave the rough diamonds of the cave…