In many workplaces—especially in tech and business—you’ll hear:
“I don’t want to play politics—I just want to do the work.”
It’s a comforting thought. Politics is often seen as a dirty word, conjuring up images of drama, power struggles, and intrigue. The solution seems simple: ignore the politics and focus on the goals. Unfortunately, this perspective is equal parts naive and dangerous, as it ignores the reality that everything is, to some extent, political.
That decision to ignore politics? It’s a political choice too, one that almost always supports the status quo. The status quo overwhelmingly favors those who hold power. Everyone else is left to navigate a system that often marginalizes their voices and concerns. To put it another way: silence is not neutrality—it’s complicity, which may not be the intent, but it is the outcome.
The myth of being “apolitical” is particularly seductive in the tech world, where data and logic are often seen as the ultimate arbiters of truth. Decisions are expected to be objective and quantifiable, free from the messy influence of human values or interests.
Yet every decision made about product features, hiring practices, engineering direction, or workplace policies is inevitably shaped by values and priorities that reflect someone’s interests and power. In other words, the choices we make are never neutral; they are political, because they decide who gets heard, who benefits, and who is left out.
Politics, at its core, isn’t manipulation or scheming—it’s the process of sharing power, negotiating resources, and deciding collectively what matters. It’s about deliberation, compromise, and accountability. These aren’t bugs in organizational life—they’re necessary features.
I’ve seen this up close in formal politics, working on local campaigns for candidates and ballot issues. Politics there isn’t just about elections—it’s about listening to people, building coalitions, and acting as a proxy for those who’ve entrusted you with their voice. That same responsibility exists in many business roles, even if we don’t call it politics.
As a consultant, I learned quickly that the right technical answer isn’t enough. Success depends on aligning interests, addressing unspoken concerns, and getting buy-in. And as a project manager, the job is political by definition: you represent a cross-functional team, broker priorities, and speak for the group in higher-stakes rooms.
Even everyday choices carry weight. Choosing where to order lunch may seem trivial, but without a clear process, it often defaults to whoever has the loudest voice or the most senior title. That’s politics in action—just informal and unacknowledged.
More consequential decisions are no different. Choosing to prioritize a revenue-driving feature over a user-protecting one? That reflects values. Deciding what qualities make someone “promotable”? That shapes who belongs and who advances. These choices aren’t made in a vacuum—they reproduce power.
When companies say they “don’t do politics,” what they usually mean is that they’re comfortable with the current distribution of power. That, too, is a political stance.
Done well, politics is a tool for fairness, transparency, and inclusion. It creates room for hard conversations and shared ownership of the outcome. You see this in open source projects, where decisions are made publicly, arguments are hashed out in the open, and contributors—regardless of title—can influence direction.
You also see it in stories like Google’s Project Maven, where thousands of employees pushed leadership to reconsider military AI work. Or in the backlash to GitHub’s ICE contracts. Or in the persistent leadership gaps—like women holding just 28% of global tech jobs, or underrepresented minorities just 12% in the U.S.—which show how political choices shape access and opportunity.
Politics can stir emotions. That’s because it matters. Campaigns taught me that emotional stakes often mean people care deeply. In the workplace, the same is true. Ignoring those emotions doesn’t neutralize them—it just cedes the conversation to the most comfortable or most powerful.
Politics is already part of your working life. If you’re advocating for a better process, calling out an imbalance, or representing your team’s interest—you’re engaged in politics. You’re doing the work of building a more responsive and inclusive system.
For leaders, that means modeling transparency, staying open to challenge, and making space for competing perspectives. For everyone else, it means asking hard questions: Who benefits? Who’s missing? What assumptions are we operating under?
When we embrace politics instead of avoiding it, we don’t make things messier—we make them more honest. And in a world where the consequences of our decisions ripple far beyond the product or project, that’s exactly what we need.