As a software engineer I could say a lot of things that can affect the experience in a workplace, like tech stack, team balance, colleagues, coorporate politics, product/industry. In the end though, there’s one experience that I had that made me realize what can make work truly fulfilling and that was when I worked in a company that had flat hierarchy. You have the freedom and the responsibility to develop and deliver, participate in decision making from spending and product features to how many days we telework and what times. Of course, not everything was perfect, but the sense of autonomy and having a say on how we shape the product that I put all this energy to build really makes a big difference.
This has made me question deeply how in tech and in all companies, in general, we put up with so deeply hierarchical and top down structures where you end up being a cog in the wheel at best. At worst you get crushed in middle management trying to explain to stakeholders that they are definetely not better at estimating deadlines than engineers.
No wonder that most people try to find meaning and fulfillment in open source projects or other activities. It would be interesting to see us putting that energy in changing our main workplace.
As a software engineer I could say a lot of things that can affect the experience in a workplace, like tech stack, team balance, colleagues, coorporate politics, product/industry. In the end though, there’s one experience that I had that made me realize what can make work truly fulfilling and that was when I worked in a company that had flat hierarchy. You have the freedom and the responsibility to develop and deliver, participate in decision making from spending and product features to how many days we telework and what times. Of course, not everything was perfect, but the sense of autonomy and having a say on how we shape the product that I put all this energy to build really makes a big difference.
This has made me question deeply how in tech and in all companies, in general, we put up with so deeply hierarchical and top down structures where you end up being a cog in the wheel at best. At worst you get crushed in middle management trying to explain to stakeholders that they are definetely not better at estimating deadlines than engineers.
No wonder that most people try to find meaning and fulfillment in open source projects or other activities. It would be interesting to see us putting that energy in changing our main workplace.