Which is to say, at some companies, playing office politics is your real job. "Work" is just a signal you can emit to show that you are willing to submit enough to not get fired.
If you can't talk to the CEO or CTO, if you're technical, on your first day physically at the company, that's a Bad Signal (tm).
It's a bit like martial arts. Being good at it is nice since you don't have to be afraid of being beaten up. If you have to fight someone every day however, there might be something wrong.
Actually, perhaps I need to preface all my advice with "in all due pragmatic cynicism." I've added it to four posts so far and people seem to react much better to them when I do.
I'm told life looks very different if you have done anything resembling settling down. But I haven't been there yet and my glasses have rose coloured lenses.
I have seen politics kill someone's work and I have seen a project launch by doing nothing but working away and submitting their end product to flabbergasted responses. But it's rarely so simple.
If you don't understand what's going on and blame politics, you are living in a foreign land and don't understand the language. If you understand and don't try to ensure your voice is heard and respected, you don't understand the customs. If you don't understand the language and customs, you're at the nations mercy.
But fundamentally if you view it as opposed to work you'll rarely succeed in the best outcome even if you do strike a balance.
I've been in situations where politicking allowed the company to pivot from an established, ineffective strategy to an new, better one.
> Get new job, jump in there really eger, do a good job.
> Face stupid political BS, eagerness disappears.
> Start looking for other jobs, then ultimately quit.
If you keep working hard in a toxic environment you're going to do yourself harm. If you care about doing good work, move company. Many will be content with just collecting a wage though.
As an aside, I'ved worked on a helpdesk and got through about 5-8 tickets a day while colleagues got through 40. Ultimately I was promoted because those 8 tickets were the ones everyone else was skipping because they didn't have a clue what to do. Neither did I, but once I figured it out I did. If your tickets regularly require on average 5 to 6 minutes work, then perhaps you should question the value of the work you're doing.
Exactly. Either leave or just coast by doing the necessary minimum and keep your stress buffers and brainpower for interesting personal stuff
Not many people knew of his Twitter account, but I did. He would post crude remarks about the manager not listening to him and how he should be the manager, often using the initials of the manager when he insulted him to be careful and not be accused of slander I guess. I would often hear him in the office talking to himself, swearing under his breath and mashing his keyboard. You could tell it was getting to him. He was on-call 24/7 but apparently wasn't adequately paid the amount he should have been for someone who was expected to fix something at the drop of a hat.
One day he came in and sat at his desk refusing to do any work. He just sat there and then the manager confronted him and asked why he wasn't addressing his list of high priority tickets that he had and then the guy lost it. He didn't get violent, but he started yelling at the guy and the manager was a well-built guy (sorted of sounded and looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger) who I wouldn't even dare cross. After yelling he just walked out and never came back.
Of course my manager reported the incident to some higher-ups and then it was revealed a couple of days later he was in a mental hospital as he had a complete breakdown (he apparently drove himself there). I didn't know him that well, but I went and visited him after finding out where he was. He told me that it all built up; he was being blamed when things went wrong and weren't done on time and not being praised when things went right and were delivered within unrealistic time-frames. His girlfriend had also left him the day prior to the meltdown, he said she was unhappy because he was never home and when he was, he was always fixing something remotely or had to come in to fix something.
I have a feeling this kind of thing is a lot more common than we can imagine.