However, I also think that there is an economic loss from the time spent doing impression management. It’s not a question of someone being more competent at impressions than others. It’s really a question of someone taking time off from being productive and instead spending it on maintaining a good impression. Resources that could have gone to work are going to “office politics/advertising” but they aren’t because no good system for separating the wheat from the chaff exists.

The same problem exists for ordinary products. Well-advertised products that are good-enough sell more than products which are great but not advertised. This happens when the chain that is responsible for bringing the product from the producer to the consumer fails to do its job.

One has to realize that the definition of competence is not only the raw skill. The ability to fake it to management and do cool Powerpoint is a skill too. And unfortunate or not, that skill is what gets promoted.

If you lack that skill, or are not as good at it as others, you may not be promoted, but you can’t go around complaining that you are “better” than those that do have it. You are NOT better – you lack a critical skill.

If you have strived for the top and not reached it, you can become cynical about what it takes to reach it. It is difficult to see less competent people rising and perhaps becoming your manager.

But you may also realize that there is some specific work that you WANT to do, and that the hierarchy is not important to you anymore. I think many people say this but do not mean it, and they become bitter. It is often evident in the way they talk about those that HAVE made it. Psychological survival requires that they maintain the fiction that they are “better” people for not playing the game.

For me, the only way out of this is to stop thinking of it as a competition with those other people, because you have LOST that race. You have to instead think of your own life and priorities:
1. Do I enjoy my work?
2. Am I adequately rewarded for my work?
3. What would I rather be doing?
etc.

I’ll be sure not to fall victim to this particular disorder… *shudders.*

If you are interested in “getting ahead” or survive the next cull, aside from having to schmooze, try to add value past your job or become the IT expert for whatever function you are in.

I hope to retire within the next two years. I am following the ERE method, 70% is saved, passive income streams are being set up. I am almost there. In the meantime, I am mentally retiring, spend time looking busy in my office while reading this blog, Facebook, Moneycentral, and preparing my personal balance sheet, forecasts and plans for FREEDOM. It is close and I can taste it. Thanks Jacob for helping show the way.

@Jacob: Thanks, I understand it better now. The solutions you provided, seem to be good enough. I’ll have to accept careerism until ERE (and/or the fore-mentioned autonomy) kicks in.

Yeah, I’m not interested in breaching integrity or trying to get something for nothing. Just not interested in extra politicking wherever it’s become a convention. I’ll do what I have to, but I agree with you that real work isn’t generally about politics at all (except in the literal sense of dealing with certain political organizing, etc., perhaps).