1. "During your most recent budget period, what influence did politics rather than the merits of budget requests have in distributing resources, and in what ways?"
2. "How heavily influenced by politics (or upper management) is the performance review process?"
3. "Has anybody recently been let go as the result of being ranked lowest on a performance review?"
4. "Are managers subject to performance improvement plans?"
5. "When was the last time your HR department found in favor of an employee over management or upper management when a dispute arose?"
There's a bias to these (if it isn't obvious). But experience informs me that answers to these questions offer a good insight into how the company really operates. If they are honest answers (they won't be, most of the time, if they're answered at all).
Politics is what happens in subjective situations where people are wrestling for resources. How many budget requests are absolutely objective and easy decisions to make? Truth be told, in a high functioning company, there shouldn't be many. But politics absolutely comes into play when you have the fuzzy.
Is Google+ a better product objectively than Buzz? I have no idea. How do you even make that decision when the project is in its infancy?
Consider John and Katy. Assume that Katy does her job, pushes her code and gets her shit done. John comes in, is a superstar gunslinger. He keeps an eye out for upper management beliefs, quickly prototypes them. Shows a bunch of flashy shit to them. YET, that is all they are. Flashy shit with rotten code. It is the job of the Katy to come and work and write good fucking code. However, both Katy and John are essential for a good organization. They should be ranked by completely different metrics depending on the needs of the organization at that time. In reality, you have managers who have a complex trade-off to make between the short term and long term. This is a situation ripe for jockeying. Politics definitely comes into the picture.
I haven't seen an organization where a power structure doesn't exist. It always does.
Existential question of the day: If the answers are almost all lies or omissions, what's the point of asking the questions? To get good at spotting the rare honest answer among the PR? And how do you know what's a lie and what isn't? There's no way to verify anything they're telling you unless you know somebody working there.
That's a good summary of my view of the entire interview process, actually, from both sides. The exception would be technical questions, of course--but even those are only marginally more useful at determining anything more than whether the candidate can answer specific questions under specific circumstances, neither of which may actually ever arise during the course of employment.
1. "During your most recent budget period, what influence did politics rather than the merits of budget requests have in distributing resources, and in what ways?"
2. "How heavily influenced by politics (or upper management) is the performance review process?"
3. "Has anybody recently been let go as the result of being ranked lowest on a performance review?"
4. "Are managers subject to performance improvement plans?"
5. "When was the last time your HR department found in favor of an employee over management or upper management when a dispute arose?"
There's a bias to these (if it isn't obvious). But experience informs me that answers to these questions offer a good insight into how the company really operates. If they are honest answers (they won't be, most of the time, if they're answered at all).