How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

Inevitability of Politics vs. Escaping It

• Many argue politics are intrinsic to any group: if you want to do meaningful work with others over time, you must learn to navigate them.
• Others insist politics are escapable: become a solo founder, avoid large orgs, or even leave tech; some claim to have done impactful work with essentially zero politicking.
• A middle view: scale, culture, and country matter a lot. Big US-style corporations are seen as especially political; small companies may have less politics but much higher variance and more personal risk.

Big Companies vs. Small Companies

• Large corps: more money, more bureaucracy, more “moral maze” dynamics, and more room for low performers to hide. Promotions often depend on perception several levels up.
• Small companies: often more autonomy, wearing many hats, and clearer visibility of who contributes – but also more fragile politics (one bad relationship can ruin you) and sometimes extreme cliques.
• Several commenters note that both can be highly political, just with different “flavors.”

Core Interpretation of the Article’s Advice

• Common paraphrase:
  • If your manager has a clear priority, focus and deliver on that.
  • If not, anticipate future priorities, prepare ideas and prototypes, and be ready when the wave comes.
• Some see this as pragmatic guidance for working inside a dysfunctional system; others see it as pure people-pleasing.

Influence Tactics Discussed

• Keep a backlog of technically sound ideas tied to likely executive goals; pitch them when crises or new “flavors of the month” hit.
• Write concise design docs / one‑pagers and “seed” them so ideas are “lying around” when leadership needs solutions.
• Align work with what your boss’s boss cares about; make managers and their managers look successful.
• Build credibility first by shipping impactful work, then use that capital to steer direction or slip refactors into real projects.

Skepticism, Cynicism, and Ethics

• Some reject the premise: they refuse to optimize for promotions or politics, prefer doing solid engineering and going home, or even doing the bare minimum if not a shareholder.
• Others criticize advice that normalizes scheming, saying it encourages manipulation, “butt‑kissing,” and optimizing metrics over genuinely useful work.
• A recurring tension: trading mental health and integrity for higher pay and advancement versus accepting slower careers in healthier or smaller environments.

Technical Work and Communicating Value

• Rewrites, refactors, tests, and “engineering hygiene” are widely seen as underappreciated unless framed in business terms (incidents avoided, velocity gained, money/time saved or new revenue enabled).
• Several stress that staff engineers must translate technical initiatives into outcomes leadership understands; otherwise such work gets viewed as invisible “bullet‑point formatting.”