"The strangest part: everyone knows. When you get people alone, after work, maybe after they've had time to decompress, they'll admit it. Their job is basically elaborate performance art. They're professional email forwards."

Perception increases value in many companies. Some people's job is just to add a nice coat of paint to the corporate machine, to make it look more attractive from the outside.

I've never had or wanted this kind of job. The people that do should consider themselves lucky.

The difference between successful and failing teams has often been a good product manager. And that often means someone skilled at navigating the politics to ensure the team has runway to accomplish what it needs to. I’m not good at that work, but I’m grateful for those who do it.

Even when I’ve shipped an obviously good change, it can be bulldozed by political forces.

I don’t know how you get work done in a reasonably sized group of people without good political navigators.