> Office politics is one somewhat cynical perspective
had director colleague say this in same words.
it cynical view, so we pretend it not happening and not rock boat.
well here we are now with layoffs. entire teams who produce no economic value. problem is too many people hired for empire building purposes.
it is easier to ignore real issues causing stagnating product. instead, bring in professional manager class. product owners, program managers, software engineering managers, senior mansgers. layers and layers of competing political incentive. building complexity for promotions and to increase head count.
Game they play is just say right platitudes like “obsessing with customers”, “all about customer journey”, “reduce friction for customer” and humble brag “my org have 120 people report”.
You're not wrong, but I think you're describing a separate issue too, which I also agree with. It's not politics, it's growing too big, too fast, and inventing jobs that were never needed before to meet some expectation of growth.
And, after all the layoffs this past year, it turns out that all the hyper-growth hires post-funding are just pawns to bolster a VC's investment.
Office politics in their pure form are rough, borderline toxic, like having someone threaten your promotion or your pay rise if you don't meet their sudden change of expectations.
The other simple fact is that a larger team or a larger org requires more communication, more co-ordination, and more management.
Beyond a point, adding parallelism doesn’t improve performance, it kills it.