The Broad View

Taking that broader view frees you from the frustration of feeling that you're right in a world of people who are wrong, says Sergey Kalinichenko, a frequent winner of TopCoder competitions. When he first began coding, he found himself at odds with the people who interacted with the systems he was building. But once Kalinichenko realized they cared about things like the system's functionality and not about maintainability, as he did, it became much easier to deal with them.

"At first I thought, 'How can they work for a technology company with very smart engineers and not speak their language?'" Kalinichenko says. "But then I realized they shouldn't even be attempting to speak my language, and I started to understand where they were coming from."

Another strategy, according to Tim Robbins, a TopCoder competitor, is to choose your battles wisely. "If you argue every point, the relationship will be rocky," he says. But if you give the boss the benefit of the doubt when you can, you build up enough respect to disagree when you really feel it's worth it. "You'll have more political power to push through what you want," he says.