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Comment by dasmoth | Hacker News Reader

What if you're looking for autonomy without becoming a manager?

You're a great worker. If you're autonomous, you're already good at managing yourself and your own work, so you're half way there. You're the person that would be high on the list of potential recruits for managerial positions if there was a shortage in your company. And you'd have to turn them down to maintain your non-managerial status and lower payroll.

If you have a group of people that can manage themselves, you have a group of potential managers. In other words, they're worth more than people who can't manage themselves, and the likelihood of them doing simpler tasks that can be done with someone more cost effective is greater. Meaning, unless you're allergic to non-autonomous people, it becomes a good business decision to just start managing some helpers instead of forcing everyone to help themselves. The quintessential helper is "the intern" (and they may be grooming you for a managerial role if they put you in charge of one).

Also, if you're an entrepreneur you're a manager. If you can't manage people, you have no business trying to build a business.

It's also worth noting public education systems do not produce managers. The teacher-student dynamic is similar to the manager-worker dynamic. They don't teach you in school that you could learn whatever you want on your own and that the teacher is mostly there just to make sure you get your work done. It's pretty much the same with managers.

Thanks for the response -- interesting stuff.

But any thoughts on what to do in the "allergic to non-autonomous people" situation?

If you're just describing people who can't or won't think for themselves (or have very poor judgement when they do), your options are (a) work alone or with a small group of people you respect, (b) work for a company with high standards for hiring (no place is perfect, but some are better than others), (c) learn how to constructively work with people you consider lesser mortals while hiding your contempt, or (d) don't put people into made-up buckets and learn how to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in. (d) is by far the most challenging, and by far the most rewarding, because what you're capable of won't forever be circumscribed by preconceived notions about people, who can be quite surprising in unexpectedly positive and negative ways.

Just to add, regarding (d), buckets will make themselves based on work, and people will make buckets for themselves based on who they are. So you want these buckets to match. Except, as a manager or an employer, you really have little control over either. If marketing needs to get done, that's a predetermined bucket. If someone loves marketing, that's their predestined bucket. But 1 to 1 matches are rare. If your business is growing, work buckets constantly change. And if you're a person, you constantly change. And then there are offices that are still trying to figure out the proper buckets, as well as the people who are still trying to figure out their passion. So it's a clusterfuck and there is always collateral damage. But you want to be working for someone who's at least trying to get it right, and usually if you can talk to that person, they'll appreciate your feedback. The key is for both sides to be flexible enough to get all the work done without making anyone too unhappy. Of course, businesses can't sacrifice work, so people end up sacrificing happiness, but for the most part, a business that fails to keep their employees happy is either a failing business or a bad business (and as an employee you should look elsewhere).

When I worked at Bell-Northern Research (and Nortel) they had two tracks for advancement. One was the managerial track where you were promoted from a technical staff to a manager, the other was the independent technical adviser. If you did the latter, you basically became a manager without any staff and you worked with the managers at your level to direct the products. There weren't many in my division, but there were some. I was unofficially one because my department manager left (after the rest of the members left) so I reported directly to the manager the next level up and sat in on the department managers' meetings.

Start your own business?

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