I would say that the other people did 'the political part' wrong. Nowhere else in life have I seen so much ego as with programmers.
I once thought it was because programming was a creative profession, and creators are protective of their creations, but I haven't seen anything like this in other creative media. When a musician composes or teaches me some music, I usually hear "that's just how I do it, you can do anything you want with it!".
It's not just about challenging seniority, either, because when I present a new approach to people with more experience than me, 90% of the time I get "here's why that's not actually better..." (and I learn something), and 10% of the time I get "OK, let's do that". (Or maybe it's 99%/1%.)
The only place I've been that even comes close is university politics. Perhaps that could explain programmer politics, since so many programmers come from there.
I once thought it was because programming was a creative profession, and creators are protective of their creations, but I haven't seen anything like this in other creative media. When a musician composes or teaches me some music, I usually hear "that's just how I do it, you can do anything you want with it!".
It's not just about challenging seniority, either, because when I present a new approach to people with more experience than me, 90% of the time I get "here's why that's not actually better..." (and I learn something), and 10% of the time I get "OK, let's do that". (Or maybe it's 99%/1%.)
The only place I've been that even comes close is university politics. Perhaps that could explain programmer politics, since so many programmers come from there.