Hacker News Reader

Comment by tiggybear | Hacker News Reader

You can act like you're not a cog, but there's only so much autonomy you get working under someone else.

If you're an employee you are a "code monkey" to one degree or another. If you do not need clear goals, Work for yourself.

You don't need dozens of people above you telling you what to do and extracting part of your paycheck if you can figure it out and execute it on your own.

View on HN

The CEO of my company doesn't tell me what to do. He tells a vice president who tells [skip a dozen or so layers of management] who tells my boss who tells me. Part of my job is to go on down the line - I'm expected to feed work to a half a dozen junior engineers (there are other senior engineers on my team who also are expected to find work to feed on down the chain).

Each level of the chain requires understanding of what the business needs. I need to make autonomous decisions every day that ultimately the CEO stands behind. The composite of all the good decisions (enough better be good) results in the success of my company and the CEO will take credit for it. However all the CEO says to me is "we will be the global leader in [the generic area my project is in]" in an all company meeting. Every step down the chain has just been filling in details.

I get what you're saying (and agree) but you're using my metaphor on how to extract a better work life in a team environment to make a completely different different point on a completely different topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com