Academia is particularly political. I&#x27;ve worked in industry and seen a lot of politics there too, but in academia the problem is much worse. I think that this article is just examining one consequence of the politics in academia, which is that people sometimes come across as assholes. The article doesn&#x27;t get to the root cause of the problem.<p>For a while now, I&#x27;ve been trying to understand why there is so much political behaviour in academia, as I really don&#x27;t like it and I&#x27;m not interested in participating. Recently, I found the answer perfectly summarised in this essay by Ben Horowitz:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bhorowitz.com&#x2F;how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_company" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bhorowitz.com&#x2F;how_to_minimize_politics_in_your_co...</a><p>Ben also explains how to solve this problem, and I couldn&#x27;t agree more.<p>This essay is included in his book, &quot;The Hard Thing about Hard Things,&quot; which gets a lot of mentions on here and is definitely worth a read.