Well, I've worked in finance and the politics, while a negative, weren't any worse than in typical software companies. In fact, I think the ethics are better in finance than in these fly-by-night VC-istan concerns.
Software politics are especially nasty, because the industry tries hard to believe that it's a meritocracy, but work where there's potential for excellence is so rare that it's allocated as a political favor. Most software engineers are assigned work that hurts their career, and have to figure out how to navigate this. The winning strategy seems to be to sneak away time and resources to learn what you really want, while creating the appearance of full dedication to the assigned work. It feels dirty and it takes a while before people are comfortable with it because, hey, everyone does it.
The best way to understand closed-allocation software politics is to watch a film about an unrelated industry: Glengarry Glenn Ross. The characters are sleazy salesmen in the 1980s, but it's really about Work and, specifically, the emasculating state of affairs that exists when high-quality work (the Glengarry leads) is inaccessible or allocated politically, leaving the rest to fail (with low quality work) in a game that looks like a meritocracy. When the film opens, you're led to believe that they're losers. They're being yelled at by their boss's friend (played by Alec Baldwin) in a performance that's truly epic. What becomes clear toward the end is that they are talented (if scummy) salesman, who have been set up to fail, because the leads given to them actually are useless. (One is a nutty old couple with no financial resources; they "just like talking to salesmen.") That's like software. The industry turns people into mediocrities and failures, but that's because the no-vision morons who call the shots at the tops of these companies are only giving them low-quality work, and they stop learning.
As a full commission sales person for a large part of my life, in my view they were crappy salespeople. In sales you quickly learn to get your own leads. I have never seen a company supplied lead that was worth a pinch of poo.
Software politics are especially nasty, because the industry tries hard to believe that it's a meritocracy, but work where there's potential for excellence is so rare that it's allocated as a political favor. Most software engineers are assigned work that hurts their career, and have to figure out how to navigate this. The winning strategy seems to be to sneak away time and resources to learn what you really want, while creating the appearance of full dedication to the assigned work. It feels dirty and it takes a while before people are comfortable with it because, hey, everyone does it.
The best way to understand closed-allocation software politics is to watch a film about an unrelated industry: Glengarry Glenn Ross. The characters are sleazy salesmen in the 1980s, but it's really about Work and, specifically, the emasculating state of affairs that exists when high-quality work (the Glengarry leads) is inaccessible or allocated politically, leaving the rest to fail (with low quality work) in a game that looks like a meritocracy. When the film opens, you're led to believe that they're losers. They're being yelled at by their boss's friend (played by Alec Baldwin) in a performance that's truly epic. What becomes clear toward the end is that they are talented (if scummy) salesman, who have been set up to fail, because the leads given to them actually are useless. (One is a nutty old couple with no financial resources; they "just like talking to salesmen.") That's like software. The industry turns people into mediocrities and failures, but that's because the no-vision morons who call the shots at the tops of these companies are only giving them low-quality work, and they stop learning.