I think you hit the nail on the head and that this is one of the primary psychological reasons many programmers don't pursue politics.
I studied psychology and communications and so much of my studies and to an extent my aspiration were in the political/communications/leadership/management field, where in my earlier teens I was I more focused on programming and anything nerdy.
After university, I realized that I didn't (yet?) want to professionally go in the direction of my studies, so I dusted off my PHP knowledge and started 'doing websites'.
Since then, it's become clear to me that I generally prefer and thrive in this world, much as I sometimes miss the 'attending x meetings, being involved with y projects, going to z meetups' side of things just a little bit.
What I've noticed is a few things: 1) these two 'worlds' seem very distinct and I can't switch between the two easily, 2) the more time I spend in 'programmer mode', the harder it is to draw from the 'political compromise' / meetings well, not just in ability but also in patience. I've had to learn to 'manage' and make sure to feed both these separate energies to do my job as a freelancer/consultant.
For example, if I know that I have a meeting with a client on Tuesday afternoon and it's preceded by a few days of serious, focused programming, I make sure to at the very least keep Tuesday empty until the meeting, and ideally some of Monday. When I don't do this the world won't end, but I notice that I'm much worse at handling the improvisational nature of a meeting. I also need more time to prepare for the various permutations of the conversation I imagine might become true.
On the other hand, if I haven't done much programming for a while, I tend to be much better at handling the vague, suboptimal, compromise-focused stuff. And perhaps I get sloppier with my code too, but I'm not sure if that is true and it strikes me as a bit too neat to be true. Still.
I studied psychology and communications and so much of my studies and to an extent my aspiration were in the political/communications/leadership/management field, where in my earlier teens I was I more focused on programming and anything nerdy.
After university, I realized that I didn't (yet?) want to professionally go in the direction of my studies, so I dusted off my PHP knowledge and started 'doing websites'.
Since then, it's become clear to me that I generally prefer and thrive in this world, much as I sometimes miss the 'attending x meetings, being involved with y projects, going to z meetups' side of things just a little bit.
What I've noticed is a few things: 1) these two 'worlds' seem very distinct and I can't switch between the two easily, 2) the more time I spend in 'programmer mode', the harder it is to draw from the 'political compromise' / meetings well, not just in ability but also in patience. I've had to learn to 'manage' and make sure to feed both these separate energies to do my job as a freelancer/consultant.
For example, if I know that I have a meeting with a client on Tuesday afternoon and it's preceded by a few days of serious, focused programming, I make sure to at the very least keep Tuesday empty until the meeting, and ideally some of Monday. When I don't do this the world won't end, but I notice that I'm much worse at handling the improvisational nature of a meeting. I also need more time to prepare for the various permutations of the conversation I imagine might become true.
On the other hand, if I haven't done much programming for a while, I tend to be much better at handling the vague, suboptimal, compromise-focused stuff. And perhaps I get sloppier with my code too, but I'm not sure if that is true and it strikes me as a bit too neat to be true. Still.