How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

Original post: How I influence tech company politics as a staff software engineer

Software engineers are not good at playing politics, and I know it very well as I’ve always been deemed too technical.

That doesn’t mean we can’t try to have influence and this piece from Sean Goedecke explains a great strategy to do so.

One option is to:

actively work to make a high-profile project successful. This is more or less what you ought to be doing anyway, just as part of your ordinary job.

This certainly gets you visibility, but does it mean you’re able to influence now? I don’t think so. As Sean said, you’re just doing your job, and on topics you haven’t chosen to focus on.

Then you can of course:

Allow some executive to spend their (much greater) political capital on your project

This definitely works great, but what happens if the executive loses interest in your project? Or is there a reorganization and the executive is reassigned? You’re back to square one.

Where I think Sean makes a great point is this::

Organizational interest comes in waves. … So if you want to get something technical done in a tech company, you ought to wait for the appropriate wave. … It’s a good idea to prepare multiple technical programs of work, all along different lines.

So basically, you’re working, you notice something that can be heavily improved but it’s not a priority and for sure there’s no time for it, then you note it down with a plausible plan of action. Do this in a loop, and you should be ready to pitch when it’s time.