Human interaction is all politics to varying degrees.

Unless you are an extreme outlier someone at some point will need to interact with someone outside of the business to get the things the business needs.

Unless you are a dictatorship of a business, coming to a consensus on what the business needs is going to require dealing with people.

I agree that politics for personal gain or CV juice is bullshit though.

Being competent should be enough, unfortunately that’s not generally how it works, which is also bullshit.