I feel it's something that's best learned by example, watching and learning from someone who's skilled in the art. I certainly can't claim to have mastered it, but I definitely think I've learned a lot about it over the years. I’d say more than anything it’s about empathizing, understanding the motivations of others and putting that knowledge to use.

I think technical people often demonstrate a complete misunderstanding and/or disregard for the subject. Yes, "politics" can be a nice way of referring to blatant corruption or cronyism, but it can also be a rationalization for social ineptitude.

It’s easy for an engineer to think that he’s being held back for refusing to play politics when he really just lacks the grace to understand and convince rather than prove and demand.

There’s more to being effective than technical excellence.

I guess, but I personally find it hard to really wrap my head around the political landscape at various jobs and have found myself in the path of the lawnmower blade more than a few times.

This is, from what I can tell, because there's not really a rhyme/reason from an observer's perspective to the politics at play. Any given meeting has several options for outcomes, and the optimal one depends on what today's politics look like instead of the obvious "what's good for the company/good for customers/etc." You can really mess yourself up good advocating for a position that seems reasonable when the current is, sometimes unbeknownst to you, flowing a different direction.

> There’s more to being effective than technical excellence.

I agree, but there's more to being politically savvy than just being nice & sociable.