On Autonomy: For those developers who are complaining about management anti-patterns, I don't think they necessarily want autonomy. I think they really do wan

On Autonomy: For those developers who are complaining about management anti-patterns, I don't think they necessarily want autonomy. I think they really do want just better managers, but the truth is that, whether or not they want it, they need autonomy to counteract/avoid bad management. Everyone is flawed, including managers. You can try and "fix" managers, but that generally works out as well as trying to "fix" anyone else that isn't yourself. The best thing to do is to restrict the scope of those who manage you and increase the scope of your own self-management. However, most people (if they are honest) are their own worst boss. They work for other people because the alternative would be to work for themselves. Having come to that realization a few years ago, I have definitely been working to improve my self-management. A consequence of this is that I come to crave that autonomy. I also get to be more picky about who I work for: if I do a pretty decent job at managing myself, you're going to have to really impress me if you want me to hand that job off to you instead.