
Is It Possible to Have a Company with No Office Politics? - PretzelFisch
https://daedtech.com/company-no-office-politics/
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davidw
It's impossible to have anything involving people that doesn't have some kind
of 'politics'.

~~~
creeble
Indeed. Plato's definition of politics is "the relationship between three or
more people".

That definition has served me well to remember over the years.

~~~
mrleinad
Interesting. Obvious question is, why is that two people is excluded?

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imgabe
Because with two people it's just the two of you together. There can be no
subgroups. With three there is the possibility of two aligning against one.
With more than three you can get even more subgroups and different alliances
that can form.

~~~
vram22
>Because with two people it's just the two of you together. >There can be no
subgroups.

Groups of one is a thing. The two people can be against each other. Common.

See also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666445)

~~~
imgabe
Right, but if there's two of you and you don't get along, you just separate.
There's no backroom conniving that can go on to get the upper hand on the
other person, because you'd need other people to connive with. You either come
to an agreement or move along.

We're talking about groups of people. Not the mathematical definition of a
group.

~~~
vram22
>Right, but if there's two of you and you don't get along, you just separate.

Not all pairs may be able to separate (immediately or even later). Real life
stuff.

>There's no backroom conniving that can go on to get the upper hand on the
other person, because you'd need other people to connive with. You either come
to an agreement or move along.

Sure, about the conniving. But scheming against the other person is quite
possible (and done plenty) for a single person against another single person.
Real life again.

>We're talking about groups of people. Not the mathematical definition of a
group.

I did not say or imply otherwise. I meant it in the real life sense.

~~~
imgabe
Two people can be against each other sure, but that's just adversaries.
There's no politics because politics implies wrangling other people to your
side against a different side. Politics is about building coalitions and
alliances.

If there's only two of you and you're working against each other, there's
nobody for you to build an alliance with. You can't be an alliance of one. You
don't have to convince yourself to do what you want to do because by
definition you already want to do it.

~~~
vram22
You could be right, for some definition of politics. Maybe we were thinking of
different meanings of it. It's an overloaded word.

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mindgam3
Replace “no office politics” with “functional office politics”, the answer is
yes.

The problem isn’t politics itself. It’s dysfunction, aka “dark patterns” aka
antisocial behavior. The other problem is headlines like this one which, as
other commenters have already pointed out, create confusion around an
otherwise worthwhile topic.

~~~
blueboo
Even non-antisocial dynamics lead to organizational dysfunction. Looking out
for your friends, preferring to associate with people like yourself, and being
rewarded for loyalty are all natural dynamics in human relationships, but are
often at cross purposes with an organization's mission.

The solution: good process and good-faith transparency, which takes work.

~~~
mindgam3
I see what you’re getting at, but you are conflating some genuinely pro-social
behaviors (loyalty and looking out for friends) with others which are more
like human social defaults (preferring people like yourself). Also, if loyalty
and ethics puts you at odds with an organization’s mission, #1, welcome to the
real world, aka why I work for myself, and #2, probably a sign that that
particular organization is dysfunctional. As opposed to all organizations.

I agree with process and translarency. Although again in dysfunctional
organizations these are the first to be gamed.

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TuringNYC
Doubtful, but office politics can be reduced by _correctly aligning
incentives._ For example, when everyone had the same incentives (e.g.,
increase profits) then there were fewer misalignments because you could at
least try to point everyone in the direction of greater profits. I've seen a
lot of organizations do silly things like make promotions purely dependent on
how many direct reports you have (rather than impact/output/production)-- this
creates a bad incentive -- people hire more and _reduce_ profits however,
increase their personal profits.

(Obviously there is another set of politics of how those profits are split,
but that is a separate topic.)

~~~
diminoten
Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or
literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix.

This obviously has the negative property of not at all feeding and watering
anyone involved, which leads to people burning out, quitting, imploding,
exploding, etc., but if your sole goal is to squash office politics,
continually having your team jump from fire to fire will do the trick!

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or
> literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix_

Strategic thinkers will use the fires to throw others under the bus. This
negative behaviour will likely surface as management deliberately torturing
employees drives the good apples away.

You see this, too, at a national level. A single, meaningful crisis brings
people together (think: Pearl Harbor.) A single, meaningless crisis makes
people cynical (think: Vietnam). Repeated crises, regardless of meaning,
inevitably tear societies apart.

~~~
diminoten
Good point! I wrote my comment to try and illustrate that politics, while
often seen as evil, is critically important to a sustainably functioning team.

Society, offices, all groups of people need politics.

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maxxxxx
Politics is being given a bad rap but in reality politics is probably one of
the best inventions of mankind. It enabled humans to organize large groups to
the benefit of all involved.

What you mean with "Office Politics" is dysfunctional politics. They exist
everywhere but to a different degree. I would be really scared of a company
that claims to have no office politics.

~~~
mark-r
I once heard that you could judge a company by the number of Dilbert cartoons
you found. Obviously having a lot is a bad sign, but having none is just as
bad - it probably means there's an official policy that doesn't allow them.

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pragmacoders
Most everyone's job, at pretty much every company, is to make life easier for
their coworkers.

Let's say you're asked to build a signup-with-facebook button.

The task is not to build a signup-with-facebook button. The task is to make it
easier for people to sign up. Presumably the signup-with-facebook button is a
good way of doing that. At least some people in the company think it is.

But the task isn't to get more signups either - it's to gain an audience -
potential sources of revenue.

Your company wants to gain the revenue because, well that's what companies do.
Companies aren't people. Doesn't matter what the company wants.

But your co-workers want to gain revenue because either it will make their
work lives easier (less pressure. Possible promotions) or their personal lives
easier (bonuses. Raises. More PTO. Less stress at work).

The Facebook button was never the job. The job was to make your co-workers
lives easier.

If you keep your head in the weeds and view the sign up button as "the job" \-
you'll be surprised if you build it, it underperforms and you don't get
recognition or rewards.

But if you view "the job" as making lives easier for those around you - and
optimize to do that well - then you'll be surprised much less often by the
results of your work. Even if there are some surprises

Higher powers might still make decisions that throw you under the bus. Though
this is essentially outside of your control. Regardless of how good at your
job you are.

This has one exception - If you are at a non-profit organization full of
selfless people. Then the actual job might be to make the biggest impact
regardless of the well being of your coworkers

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newyankee
A more relevant question for me is whether it is possible to provide 80 % of
your time to 'actual work' and yet have a fulfilling and successful career.
Especially if you are introvert, not able to sell yourself, not using fancy
jargon.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Depends on how you define “actual work”. In any professional field, keeping
people informed and convincing them you’re right is a core job responsibility,
even though it largely intersects with office politics.

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jeffreyrogers
No. I used to work at a company with an alleged meritocracy, rather than
office politics. They claimed to value opinions based on the quality of the
opinion, not who it came from or how senior you were. Somehow the senior
people always ended up having the "best" ideas, and because this was a
"meritocracy" it obviously meant those who were higher up were there on their
merits, not for political reasons. I left for other reasons, but the constant
need to pretend that what would be described as office politics in any other
organization was a result of this company's superior culture was frustrating.

~~~
mcguire
That was, I believe, the original meaning of the word "meritocracy."

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SkyPuncher
I'm pretty sure Office Politics is like bugs in code.

The only way to not have a bug is to not have any code.

"Politics" are simply an expression of differing world views. Unless your
startup is a cult, you will have drastically differing world views.

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crimsonalucard
Is it possible to have a group of people interact for a lengthy period of time
with no politics? Even family units have politics, and no bond is greater than
the ones established by blood.

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logfromblammo
No. Not if humans work there.

There will always be politics, and what's more, they will be significantly
impacted by factors seemingly as trivial as location and geometry.

For example, if you have a large open workspace with square cubicles, flanked
on either side by balconies with longer and narrower rectangular cubicles, you
may find that the balcony employees will affect an air of cliquish superiority
over the floor employees, and will furthermore form a rivalry pitting left
balcony against right balcony.

Then, whatever mad scheme it is that forms organically out of the workspace
geography, it will be propagated via the personnel, even after you move to a
new office. There will always be _something_ that subtly influences all the
decisions not having a direct impact on the work. Whenever you try to
extinguish one that has been allowed to grow toxic or rotten, another may
creep up behind you to supplant it.

The dangerous thing is when a player consciously influences the natural
politics to gain power over the workplace beyond that granted by the
organizational hierarchy, or to secure a promotion. The probability of such an
individual joining your group and upsetting the previous homeostasis during a
given interval increases with the size of the company. If it is possible for
someone to transfer in, cause chaos, and get promoted up or out, then that
pattern will eventually be exploited.

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lordnacho
There's always some kind of politics, but the worst kind happens when you have
technical frauds.

I'm of course talking about firms with a lot of technical staff, that are
providing some sort of expert service.

What is a technical fraud? A person who on paper has technical chops, but in
fact does not. I used to work with a guy who had a Phd but didn't know what
Kuhn-Tucker conditions were, or the rank of a matrix, or version control.

What's so bad about them compared to other staff? Most people are going to
know that your sales guy who studied philosophy is not an authority on
technical matters. He knows it too. So when it comes to influencing decisions,
he doesn't pretend he has authority over such matters. He says stuff that you
generally don't need anything other than common business knowledge to think
about.

Your technical fraud tricks sales guy and other non technical staff into
believing him. Things he say need to be carefully disassembled to be argued
against, eating up time and effort. He seems confident because it's easy to
seem like you've thought things through. It's like inverse proof-of-work: it's
easy to say things like "we can guarantee ordering and once-only delivery".
It's hard to deconstruct it, and it will certainly wear out the non technical
decision makers.

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mcguire
I have two issues with this article:

" _As companies scale, they begin an inevitable process of selling out their
initial principles and sacrificing quality and purity._ "

This assumes small companies have "initial principles" and believe in "quality
and purity". I've known some that focused on quality and purity, and they've
almost universally spent a lot of money to no particular result. "Initial
principles" tend to go out of the window as soon as you have _a company._

It's possible in a small company to seem to have no unhealthy politics, by
virtue of all agreeing on the same goals and values, in turn by virtue of
sharing a "culture". The downside is that anyone who is not a "good cultural
fit", who didn't go to the same schools and have the same life experiences and
what-not, is most definitely not welcome. And, on the other hand, it's
entirely possible to have healthy office politics and a drastically toxic
culture.

" _But knowledge work requires something different. It goes best when the
people closest to the work make decisions._ "

The extreme extension of this is everyone doing their own thing. If you've
ever worked in an environment where everyone does their own thing---usually
because they don't want to get into the politics---, well, I believe you come
to the conclusion that it isn't pretty.

Most people don't care who makes decisions, as long as those decisions are
what they agree with; likewise, if they disagree with a decision, it doesn't
matter who made it.

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da_chicken
Yes, it's called a sole proprietorship.

~~~
todipa
You can still have a sole proprietorship but have employees. Sole
proprietorship means that you are the sole owner.

I think what you meant is 1 person company with the owner being the only
person working for the company... Agree with you on this point.

~~~
da_chicken
Yes, but you understood that I clearly meant a single employee company, didn't
you? Communication successful.

------
motohagiography
Arguably, given politics is how we reconcile diverging interests, it is what
you get when people are not aligned to the same principles. When you have
peers without clear principles, you have politics.

Poor leadership causes people to reach for whatever tools they can find to
ensure their personal interests prevail. In a startup if you have politics, it
is because you don't have direction and you are basically burning cash while
everyone re-negotiates how they relate to one another at each new interaction.

If you are in a company that is political without being profitable, I suspect
they're already dead and would use it as a platform to get your next gig and
split. If it is profitable and political, I would opt to take cash, as their
stock will have more downside than upside because they are optimizing for
survival not growth. No politics and no profit? Probably a cult. Profitable
with no politics? Sell everything you own to buy options.

In a large company, you are basically the minder of capital or assets, with
survival and continuity prioritized over growth. When it stops growing at a
sufficient rate, it's going to stop producing value and growth and enter a
cycle of pathological optimization. Setting people against one another in this
fixed resource environment is economical when you have a stable business that
needs optimization. Fittest survive, etc. But for growth, that misalignment
just creates massive opportunity cost.

Where you have managers sitting on a pile of capital with no sense of how to
grow it, they end up operating a death spiral as they switch from the growth
strategy they were not equipped for, to more familiar optimization strategies.

Management anti-patterns are the effect of incentives, and clear leadership
(vision, direction, alignment) has the ability to resolve those. Leadership
obviates politics, and in places where it's good, people know what is expected
of them and others, and where they fit in.

For this reason, I think professional managers often don't belong in startup
environments because they are trained to optimize for fitness and not growth.

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webwanderings
The better question is: is it possible for people to be diplomatic? (with
empathy and care towards each other and the environment).

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baldfat
You have more then two people their is politics.

Work, home, school, government, church you name it.

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anm89
Is it possible to suppress human nature in my office full of humans?

Surprisingly, no.

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RickJWagner
With a sole proprietorship, certainly.

With a partnership, maybe.

Anything bigger, unfortunately not.

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heroesbane
I would hope so. My employer fucking blows.

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sleepysysadmin
Really good article!

I think the one point is really valuable. Decision making and who does it.

Practically every software engineer will debate SVN vs git; but when someone
up the chain decides clear case, that's politics.

Also makes me think, "The Pheonix Project" book. The underlying thing they
never really discuss was who made the decisions. I wonder if that's really the
root cause.

~~~
jdavis703
As someone who has worked on geographically distributed remote teams, I can
assure that politics can be just as ugly as in the physical office. In one
place I'd say politics was even worse, everything in Slack was as performative
as a Twitter exchange on a controversial topic.

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gnulinux
I'm extremely skeptical if my anecdote has any value since I'm very young and
only worked in a couple companies. But in the current company I'm working
(which I've been working the last 7 months) we really don't have office
politics. So, I suppose the answer to title is yes?

~~~
klodolph
Did you catch the definition for "politics" that the article uses?

> Politics is the process of making decisions that apply to members of a
> group.

So if you have a group of people, and that people makes decisions using some
process, then you have politics.

My general experience with mentoring young employees relatively new to the
workforce (say, 5 years or less) is that many of these employees think that
they can just do good work and keep their head out of office politics. But in
a very real sense, the only reason that this can possibly work is because
someone else on the team is actively looking out for these people, and if you
ignore politics indefinitely, you will eventually be in a position of
seniority where it is your job to look out for the new employees.

If you believe that your office doesn't really have office politics, my
prediction is that if you end in any kind of leadership position, you will
have either changed your mind by that point about whether you have politics,
or you will suffer from some avoidable failures.

