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Autonomy, relationships and mastery. Its never about the company or the work. You'll be happy if you have a boss who trusts you completely and colleagues that

Autonomy, relationships and mastery. Its never about the company or the work. You'll be happy if you have a boss who trusts you completely and colleagues that aren't a-holes. If you have this you will find the work thats interesting.

quickthrower2 9y ago
Amen. I'm on my third job move in the last 6 yrs to try and harness this elusive situation. Hope I've found it this time.
- keeptrying 9y ago
  Its very hard to find such situations. The only way that comes to mind is knowing someone well enough in a company that needs your skills when you need a job. Its a very small intersection in time/space/relationships. I've always lucked into these situations. And honestly I never really realized how lucky I was because I didn't have anything to compare it to. Not joining teams with bad bosses is one way to go about this. This is also very very difficult because these guys will offer you a ton of money. Honestly, the best advice I think is to follow your best boss when he moves once you've found one. (Again this advice only "works" in SV where there are a massive number of growing companies where people move very frequently).
  - apohn 9y ago
    >I've always lucked into these situations Given that you know to look for a good boss and you know to resist offers purely based on financial terms, I think you are helping yourself to make your own "luck" :)
gdulli 9y ago
> Its never about the company or the work. Yeah, I'm at the same company I was at 18 months ago and at that time it was the one I'd been the most happiest at in my career. Autonomy, great leadership, trust, people over process. Same company today, same work, but the opposite of all those intangibles. New leadership, new values. Significant turnover now, following an era of unusually low turnover. Total commitment to the new direction despite the picture painted by direct feedback and turnover.
tiggybear 9y ago
I've been in decent companies that I just feel like shit in because of what my skills were contributing to. The most notable was a couple years I spent working under a pharma giant, I've never felt so disgusted with myself in my life. Coming up with new ways to get money from your customers, I mean patients, for the same or lesser service did not sit right with me. So for me, it's largely about the work/company. How can you not care about what you contribute to day-to-day, yet feel entitled to be upset at CEO's and politicians who do bad things "for the money"? I think everyone from migrant workers to a fortune 500 CEO has a moral obligation to not write off injustices they are contributing to because of their mortgage or whatever money-centric excuse they use. At the same time, live your life the way you want. You just aren't any better than the bank lobbyists/Comcast CEO/insert evil company leader here, they all have the same excuse as you...money. You are your actions, not your words or thoughts.
apohn 9y ago
>Autonomy, relationships and mastery. I agree with you. However, I suspect HN has a lot of people who value these things, but I wonder what percentage of people are purely focused on other things (e.g. money, power, etc)and don't care much about these values outside of how it serves their primary motivations. Sometimes these are the people who value autonomy in their own jobs, but want to make sure nobody else has autonomy in theirs. Relationships are also a means to an end. Mastery sticks out to me in this. In a lot of years of working, I've only met a few people who really pushed themselves towards mastery. Or worse, they mastered focusing on their Job Title/Salary. Many people seem to be fine with being satisfactory. I don't think there's anything wrong with this since satisfactory means you're doing a good job.
gargravarr 9y ago
Perfectly summed up. I worked as an intern at a factory while at university studying computer science. All the process machines were computer controlled, along with office computers for accounting and material control. Despite having a workforce of 200, there were only 2 IT guys there - 1 sysadmin, 1 developer, and I was slotted between them. I was given a year-long development project, but during lulls in the activity, I was able to help both guys with their work, and in doing so, found several long-suspended projects the sysadmin had wanted to implement. I was able to kick some of these into gear; for one of them, a virtualisation project, I wrote a design document in my own time, presented it with projected costs to the CEO and was given the okay to start it. We built the platform (ESXi) on time and under budget, and there were a lot of immediate benefits. I was able to retire half the servers in the server room. It all really boiled down to trust; I was given the keys to the kingdom at that job, with domain admin access to do tech support, and not only did I get to play with some cool technology, I was able to implement stuff that made people's lives easier - I built a Windows Deployment Server (another long mothballed idea) which brought our workstation build time from 6 hours (fresh install of XP plus post-install updates, not even slipstreamed, then install software manually) down to 15 minutes (deploying the pre-built image over PXE). I do believe I left the place in a better state than when I joined, but it was quite bittersweet - I came to realise I'd probably never be trusted with that kind of power over the company infrastructure again. My first real job, I was a tiny cog in a global machine, and I couldn't deal with that. I lasted 3 months before quitting. My next job was in development, I stuck that for 3 years as it was predictable and fairly calm. I didn't enjoy it as much, but I needed the stability at the time. I moved into DevOps for a year, but my boss was an incredible micromanager who didn't trust people beneath him to do their jobs. After a year of being ignored and getting little work done, I lost interest. I found another job, which I started last month. In contrast to my previous experience in long-established companies, I'm now working at a start-up as a sysadmin. And whilst the pace and the rapid hiring are really different to what I'm used to, I have some of that intern power again - my suggestions are taken on board, and I am trusted to do my job. I also get on very well with the people here, and they're coming to appreciate having someone to turn to for tech issues - previously, no single person was in charge of inventory or tech support, and now they can just ask me. I think the intern job was the best of both worlds - the calm, predictable pace of an established firm, but with the startup-ish get-it-done attitude to IT work that stopped bureaucracy getting in the way. But I think I can deal with the fast pace so long as I can stay in control of my responsibilities.

quickthrower2 9y ago

Amen. I'm on my third job move in the last 6 yrs to try and harness this elusive situation. Hope I've found it this time.

keeptrying 9y ago
Its very hard to find such situations. The only way that comes to mind is knowing someone well enough in a company that needs your skills when you need a job. Its a very small intersection in time/space/relationships. I've always lucked into these situations. And honestly I never really realized how lucky I was because I didn't have anything to compare it to. Not joining teams with bad bosses is one way to go about this. This is also very very difficult because these guys will offer you a ton of money. Honestly, the best advice I think is to follow your best boss when he moves once you've found one. (Again this advice only "works" in SV where there are a massive number of growing companies where people move very frequently).
- apohn 9y ago
  >I've always lucked into these situations Given that you know to look for a good boss and you know to resist offers purely based on financial terms, I think you are helping yourself to make your own "luck" :)

gdulli 9y ago

> Its never about the company or the work. Yeah, I'm at the same company I was at 18 months ago and at that time it was the one I'd been the most happiest at in my career. Autonomy, great leadership, trust, people over process. Same company today, same work, but the opposite of all those intangibles. New leadership, new values. Significant turnover now, following an era of unusually low turnover. Total commitment to the new direction despite the picture painted by direct feedback and turnover.

tiggybear 9y ago

I've been in decent companies that I just feel like shit in because of what my skills were contributing to. The most notable was a couple years I spent working under a pharma giant, I've never felt so disgusted with myself in my life. Coming up with new ways to get money from your customers, I mean patients, for the same or lesser service did not sit right with me. So for me, it's largely about the work/company. How can you not care about what you contribute to day-to-day, yet feel entitled to be upset at CEO's and politicians who do bad things "for the money"? I think everyone from migrant workers to a fortune 500 CEO has a moral obligation to not write off injustices they are contributing to because of their mortgage or whatever money-centric excuse they use. At the same time, live your life the way you want. You just aren't any better than the bank lobbyists/Comcast CEO/insert evil company leader here, they all have the same excuse as you...money. You are your actions, not your words or thoughts.

apohn 9y ago

>Autonomy, relationships and mastery. I agree with you. However, I suspect HN has a lot of people who value these things, but I wonder what percentage of people are purely focused on other things (e.g. money, power, etc)and don't care much about these values outside of how it serves their primary motivations. Sometimes these are the people who value autonomy in their own jobs, but want to make sure nobody else has autonomy in theirs. Relationships are also a means to an end. Mastery sticks out to me in this. In a lot of years of working, I've only met a few people who really pushed themselves towards mastery. Or worse, they mastered focusing on their Job Title/Salary. Many people seem to be fine with being satisfactory. I don't think there's anything wrong with this since satisfactory means you're doing a good job.

gargravarr 9y ago

Perfectly summed up. I worked as an intern at a factory while at university studying computer science. All the process machines were computer controlled, along with office computers for accounting and material control. Despite having a workforce of 200, there were only 2 IT guys there - 1 sysadmin, 1 developer, and I was slotted between them. I was given a year-long development project, but during lulls in the activity, I was able to help both guys with their work, and in doing so, found several long-suspended projects the sysadmin had wanted to implement. I was able to kick some of these into gear; for one of them, a virtualisation project, I wrote a design document in my own time, presented it with projected costs to the CEO and was given the okay to start it. We built the platform (ESXi) on time and under budget, and there were a lot of immediate benefits. I was able to retire half the servers in the server room. It all really boiled down to trust; I was given the keys to the kingdom at that job, with domain admin access to do tech support, and not only did I get to play with some cool technology, I was able to implement stuff that made people's lives easier - I built a Windows Deployment Server (another long mothballed idea) which brought our workstation build time from 6 hours (fresh install of XP plus post-install updates, not even slipstreamed, then install software manually) down to 15 minutes (deploying the pre-built image over PXE). I do believe I left the place in a better state than when I joined, but it was quite bittersweet - I came to realise I'd probably never be trusted with that kind of power over the company infrastructure again. My first real job, I was a tiny cog in a global machine, and I couldn't deal with that. I lasted 3 months before quitting. My next job was in development, I stuck that for 3 years as it was predictable and fairly calm. I didn't enjoy it as much, but I needed the stability at the time. I moved into DevOps for a year, but my boss was an incredible micromanager who didn't trust people beneath him to do their jobs. After a year of being ignored and getting little work done, I lost interest. I found another job, which I started last month. In contrast to my previous experience in long-established companies, I'm now working at a start-up as a sysadmin. And whilst the pace and the rapid hiring are really different to what I'm used to, I have some of that intern power again - my suggestions are taken on board, and I am trusted to do my job. I also get on very well with the people here, and they're coming to appreciate having someone to turn to for tech issues - previously, no single person was in charge of inventory or tech support, and now they can just ask me. I think the intern job was the best of both worlds - the calm, predictable pace of an established firm, but with the startup-ish get-it-done attitude to IT work that stopped bureaucracy getting in the way. But I think I can deal with the fast pace so long as I can stay in control of my responsibilities.