How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

5 hours ago

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Many software engineers avoid company politics, believing they can't influence decisions due to selfish motives, dysfunctional stakeholders, lack of private information, and political disadvantage.
Engineers shouldn't scheme like political operators but can influence politics by making high-profile projects successful, aligning with executives' goals for rewards like bonuses and promotions.
Another strategy is aligning pet projects with existing political campaigns, leveraging executives' political capital instead of spending your own.
Organizational priorities shift in waves (e.g., reliability, developer experience, performance). Engineers should prepare multiple technical plans to align with these shifts.
Having well-prepared technical programs ready for executive priorities prevents bad decisions when political urgency meets a lack of good ideas.
Senior engineers are expected to provide the right technical solutions at the right time—failure to do so can lead to blame.
This approach can be seen cynically as aiding corporate power struggles or optimistically as aligning technical work with company priorities.
Advice applies to functional, profitable tech companies, not necessarily dysfunctional ones.

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