2025-10-16
Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and influence in the service of good outcomes.
Here’s what good politics looks like in practice:
- Building relationships before you need them. That random coffee with someone from the data team? Six months later, they’re your biggest advocate for getting engineering resources for your data pipeline project.
- Understanding the real incentives. Your VP doesn’t care about your beautiful microservices architecture. They care about shipping features faster. Frame your technical proposals in terms of what they actually care about.
- Managing up effectively. Your manager is juggling competing priorities you don’t see. Keep them informed about what matters, flag problems early with potential solutions, and help them make good decisions. When they trust you to handle things, they’ll fight for you when it matters
- Creating win-win situations. Instead of fighting for resources, find ways to help other teams while getting what you need. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
- Being visible. If you do great work but nobody knows about it, did it really happen? Share your wins, present at all-hands, write those design docs that everyone will reference later.
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