I thoroughly believed this after working at a small company with little politics in one of my first jobs.

But then a couple of the later small companies/startups I worked for had politics to such an insane degree that I no longer believe small companies are better or worse in general. They just have a larger variance.

The larger the company, the more the workforce trends toward the mean. When you hire 10,000 people you can't exclusively build a company of low-politics people.

With a 10-person company you technically can build that company of mostyl 1-in-100 employees who work well together. However, you could also stumble into a company where you're working with 10 people who have worked together previously and have no intention of bringing you into their inner circle. The politics at this latter type of company is truly next level hell because there's nowhere to go, unlike at a big company or FAANG where you can transfer teams or rely on your resume to get you into the application process at another company easily.

> It's just obvious to everyone who is delivering value and who is not.

In my experience at highly political small companies, this doesn't matter. The people running the political show want the upper echelon of the company to be composed of their close friends and allies. They want the people who produce to be stuck doing the grunt work.

This does not align with my experience at small tech companies at all, and I've worked an many.

But the flavor of the politics is very different. At a small company as an IC you will very likely be working directly with multiple C-levels, often providing important context between them. A senior IC will need to be reaching out pretty actively across teams to make sure things are happening and you'll quickly build an internal network of "good people who get shit done fast".

Politics can seem no existent because in some cases just getting along well with leadership can be enough to make your life very easy. But you'll see how truly political these situations are if you have the opposite situation: someone in leadership just doesn't like you. One bad relationship can ruin you in a small company.

In a large company it's not too hard to just keep your head down (at least as an IC) and largely let your manager worry about politics. For managers it can seem more political because typically the "be friends with leadership" doesn't work because the hierarchy is both broader and deeper.

This line alone makes me believe you've never worked at small companies.

Small companies are where people who don't have better options go to coast either voluntarily, or involuntarily.