My experience with large organizations is that everyone thinks they're the best, unless they're far below average.
In a good company, engineers themselves probably deal with less politics than a startup, because there's a layer of management dedicated to filtering out the politics from the engineers.
You'll still have to deal with shit like several departments trying to push dependencies or accountability to another department. But the internal politics themselves can be milder.
The brand name companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) will also probably have much more politics as they attract competitive types. I'm sure these companies do a lot to filter, but things like this are very hard to filter.
I found it funny that this was posted four hours ago and not a single response. It may be difficult to get away from politics in large organizations whose efforts are focused on developing a handful of products.
Why does the tech company need to be public? Is this just a proxy for “big”? Or do you actually care about the company having shares, perhaps because you like getting RSUs?
You want visibility? Apple. Though, you have to work your butt off from Mon to Sun and build something solid. You also have to be your manager’s dog. Follow him/her everywhere and help him/her closing bugs and building stuff.
It's always team dependent. Do your work well and make your manager happy. Eventually start your own thing.
Pick small companies instead because politics will always exist in if ones. There simply is no way around it.
Where there are people there will be politics. Perhaps in the distant future when AI takes over it will be better.
Probably those with a strong like Tesla but I'm not sure if they are better place to work at as en amployee.
Unless you're the lead dog, the view never changes.
> In other words, what public tech company can engineers work at where you’re not battling for visibility and preference?
There isn't one. Identifying and influencing the people who decide stuff--who does what work, business and technical strategy, your bonus--is always a valuable and necessary skill. A good manager can do some of that for you, but can't take it over entirely.
More practically, variation from group to group within a large company is usually bigger than variation between companies. I doubt a useful answer to your question exists.
If you want a job with less politics, then you're probably better off assessing specific opportunities than assessing massive companies on average. Like, ask "How did you choose the tools for your most recent project?" in the interview, and see what that tells you about their power structure.