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Comment by dshpala | Hacker News Reader

How can one become better at office politics? What are books to read / courses to take?

Recite from an eldritch cursed hand-crafted copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" written in blood, backwards and upside down, under full moonlight, in an eerily silent forest clearing.

(Light* animal sacrifice may also be required.)

I was forced to read that book and 'how to be a superstar'. Due to a manager who disliked my bluntness in saying things were broken. He wanted me to punch it up with doublespeak to make him feel better.

They show how to manipulate people. But not solid advice on how to do the right thing.

I don't think that anybody thinking in terms of "winning" friends and "influencing" people is worried at all about doing the "right" thing.

Honestly, I read the book about 15 years ago and my takeaway at that time was that... actually, It's OK to be nice to people and to let your desire to help them manifest itself. At that point in my life I was kind of a little shit and was utterly paranoid of being taken advantage of and viewed interactions very transactional.

So, yeah... That's not what I took from that book at all. Maybe I should read it again because maybe it's not really as I remember it, since so many people seem to hate it?

I feel like a lot of people judge "How to Win Friends and Influence People" literally by the cover. Its main message is to continually improve your own character. (What I took away anyway)

While there are definitely some toxic books out there (the "## laws of power", as an example. I don't remember what the number was but it was two digits), I don't think How to Win Friends is one of them.

Maybe I worded that a bit strongly. As the reasons for me having to read it still irk me. But the root is how to draw people in by being nicer. It is a form of manipulation and not true to who you are. Now given that there is nothing wrong with improving yourself to be less of a jerk. Those books do have that sort of advice. But the advice is given with the intention of manipulation. I may be being harsh on them. But that was my takeaway. Decent advice but bad intentions.

I think the once perfectly ordinary idiom of “winning friends” has fallen out of usage in the (many) decades since that book was written, to the extent that people now – just like you here – read something nefarious into it that wasn’t originally there at all.

This is a good and rather funny thing to read: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Get burned by them repeatedly and try to understand why/how. Also watch The Godfather and maybe The Sopranos.

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