> In "traditional" companies, developers get work items assigned to them - most often JIRA tickets. These tickets are vetted by the product - or project - manager, and they have most key details to do the work. And they're expected to do just that. There's little need for questions unless it's about clarifying a detail in the ticket.

> Join a "SV-like" company, and you'll see little of this. There are projects, and there are program managers and engineering managers. But for the most part, engineers are expected (and encouraged!) to figure out the "how" of the work, including making larger decisions. In some places, each project would have an engineer leading it, who facilitates breaking up the work. At other places, engineering managers or senior engineers could do this work. Regardless of how it's done, all engineers are incentivized to look at the big picture, to unblock themselves, and to solve any problem they see.

> Engineers taking initiative is something "SV-like" companies celebrate. It's common to see services and features built that engineers suggested or have teams spend dedicated time paying off tech debt that people on the team advocated for. And it is uncommon for managers to tell engineers what exactly to do, to break down their work into small chunks or to micromanage them. People self manage.

> The expectation from developers at traditional companies is to complete assigned work. At SV-like companies, it's to solve problems that the business has. This is a huge difference. It impacts the day-to-day life of any engineer.

Pounding at small broken out tickets under micromanagement structures is a combination of boring and stress ridden, to me.

Not like in the 'old days'. A Google developer came up with Gmail, rememeber?

It seems like ideas come out of meetings at bigger companies. If a developer has an idea, he needs to create a startup.