The most egregious office politics I've ever experienced came from the company that had a pathological aversion to managers.
They aimed for minimizing managerial positions to an extreme. The result was that a lot of ICs were playing hardball politics with nobody to keep them in check.
Really opened my eyes to the reality of office politics.
Those people are also dead weight. I despise the fact that I have to play politics at work. Work should be based on results, period. Spending time politicking is not producing results; at best, it’s eventually producing via cajoling what could have been accomplished in 1/4 the time if you’d been left alone and trusted.
The people who play politics also have their work judged by results. Getting yourself promoted to head a project that prints money for the company with little cost doesn't necessarily cause the project to stop printing money.
If you’re buddies with higher-ups, they absolutely can and will look upon your projects with a softer eye. There’s a limit, of course, and that heavily depends on the company culture, but it’s unreasonable to expect favoritism to not factor in at all.
They aimed for minimizing managerial positions to an extreme. The result was that a lot of ICs were playing hardball politics with nobody to keep them in check.
Really opened my eyes to the reality of office politics.