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"Clear goals" can have different levels of abstraction. Junior code monkeys may need finely grained detailed steps while climbing the technical, architectural o

by lloeki 9y ago

"Clear goals" can have different levels of abstraction. Junior code monkeys may need finely grained detailed steps while climbing the technical, architectural or management ladder will make your goals more abstract as they encompass greater breadth and depth, yet them not being any less clear. "Steer team to deliver product A in 3 months with top quality" or "provide analysis of strange crash events P, Q, R that appear to be vaguely related and originate in lib K, and propose possible short-term mitigation tactics as well as systemwide refactoring strategies to reduce or remove dependency on regularly problematic but heavily used lib K within a mid-term timeframe, and we'll talk about your conclusions in two weeks" can be just as clear to some people as "implement method foo doing X according to spec point Y.Z by the end of the day" is to others.

lliamander 9y ago
This is true. However, I think at the highest levels of autonomy is when people actually get to define what their goals are[0]. That is not to say that it cannot be done remotely. In fact, in most large tech organizations, the highest autonomy positions will almost certainly entail a lot of remote collaboration (with customers, sales, suppliers, support, remote engineering teams, etc.). However, the more autonomy one is granted, the more context one needs to make the correct decisions. Context requires access to high-signal information sources (i.e. relationships with the right people). Being in the office is a good way to discover those information sources. You also have to make yourself highly visible. You can certainly do that while being remote, but there is more conscious effort involved. [0] https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin...

by lloeki 9y ago

lliamander 9y ago

This is true. However, I think at the highest levels of autonomy is when people actually get to define what their goals are[0]. That is not to say that it cannot be done remotely. In fact, in most large tech organizations, the highest autonomy positions will almost certainly entail a lot of remote collaboration (with customers, sales, suppliers, support, remote engineering teams, etc.). However, the more autonomy one is granted, the more context one needs to make the correct decisions. Context requires access to high-signal information sources (i.e. relationships with the right people). Being in the office is a good way to discover those information sources. You also have to make yourself highly visible. You can certainly do that while being remote, but there is more conscious effort involved. [0] https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin...