Say the word “politics” to most engineers and watch their face scrunch up like they just bit into a lemon. We’ve all been conditioned to believe that workplace politics is this dirty game played by manipulative ladder-climbers while the “real” engineers focus on the code.
I used to think the same way. For years as an engineer, I wore my hatred of politics like a badge of honor. I was above all that nonsense. I just wanted to ship. Politics was for those other people, the ones who didn’t have what it takes technically.
Now I think the opposite: politics isn’t the problem; bad politics is. And pretending politics doesn’t exist? That’s how bad politics wins.
Politics is just how humans coordinate in groups. It’s the invisible network of relationships, influence, and informal power that exists in every organization. You can refuse to participate, but that doesn’t make it go away. It just means decisions get made without you.
Think about the last time a terrible technical decision got pushed through at your company. Maybe it was adopting some overcomplicated architecture, or choosing a vendor that everyone knew was wrong, or killing a project that was actually working. I bet if you dig into what happened, you’ll find it wasn’t because the decision-makers were stupid. It’s because the people with the right information weren’t in the room. They “didn’t do politics.”
Meanwhile, someone who understood how influence works was in that room, making their case, building coalitions, showing they’d done their homework. And their idea won. Not because it was better, but because they showed up to play while everyone else was “too pure” for politics.
Ideas don’t speak. People do. And the people who understand how to navigate organizational dynamics, build relationships, and yes, play politics? Their ideas get heard.
When you build strong relationships across teams, understand what motivates different stakeholders, and know how to build consensus, you’re doing politics. When you take time to explain your technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders in language they understand, that’s politics. When you grab coffee with someone from another team to understand their challenges, that’s politics too.
Good politics is just being strategic about relationships and influence in the service of good outcomes.
The best technical leaders are incredibly political. They just don’t call it that. They call it “stakeholder management” or “building alignment” or “organizational awareness.” But it’s politics, and they’re good at it.
The engineers who refuse to engage with politics often complain that their companies make bad technical decisions. But they’re not willing to do what it takes to influence those decisions. They want a world where technical merit alone determines outcomes. That world doesn’t exist and never has.
This isn’t about becoming a scheming backstabber. As I wrote in Your Strengths Are Your Weaknesses, the same trait can be positive or negative depending on how you use it. Politics is the same way. You can use political skills to manipulate and self-promote, or you can use them to get good ideas implemented and protect your team from bad decisions.
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.
The alternative to good politics isn’t no politics. It’s bad politics winning by default. It’s the loud person who’s wrong getting their way because the quiet person who’s right won’t speak up. It’s good projects dying because nobody advocated for them. It’s talented people leaving because they couldn’t navigate the organizational dynamics.
Stop pretending you’re above politics. You’re not. Nobody is. The only question is whether you’ll get good at it or keep losing to people who already are.