Totally do not agree. Ethics and morals are tied to action. You cannot develop an AI tool without biases, you cannot develop GPL open source software without doing an act belonging to the left, you cannot ask for premium fees on your open core without doing something that belongs to the right. Just state your politic side, and do your work anyway for the benefit of every person, left or right.
Agree. I'll add some arguments. As another recent HN post pointed out there's good politics and BS politics.
For example engineering and business usually have orthogonal goals and different time frames. Working out a solution both can be happy with is good politics.
I've mentioned numerous examples on HN of BS politics so I won't waste your time there. But read Ishikawa's TQM the japanese way for the big picture.
Second a reflexive avoidance of politics is a bad sign. To deal with politics (and disagree) puts you one step closer to conflict with management. Now if management is malign or incompetent that that's a problem - but it's a problem that if not solved will sink the ship. Tech stuff is subservient to organizational maturity not the reverse.
Alternatively management may be fine but one may work from a cynical viewpoint and act like there's a problem where there is not. Don't do that. Bleeding cynicism is poison for cross functional coordination. A reflexive rejection of politics signifies fear, and absence of solutions which is not what we want to see in senior people.
And like the comment above says morals and ethics count. You can have a brain but if you don't have a backbone to push back ... you are not helping. You are part of the problem.
Good politics is people are good until proven otherwise, about pushing to organization to a higher local maximum even if its a touch uncomfortable making that jump.
The idea real valuable work can get done without politics is glib ignoring major potential problems. It rests on a nebulous definition of politics. It sounds nice in an interview (because it's a conveys a false sense of safety or risk) but it absolutely isn't help on the job. Finally, we can't know what a person really thinks ... until he/she is on the receiving end of a bad deal. Until then it's all talk without consequence.
