Job hunting checklist: #2 Autonomy

I covered purpose on the first item of my list, and the second most important thing for me when looking for a new job is Autonomy.

Autonomy should not be confused with independence. Autonomy is not individualism. It’s being able to make your own decisions instead of always be waiting for someone else to tell you how to work. You can read more about the differences between autonomy and independence here.

Being able to have control over the work you do is critical when dealing with creative tasks, but that’s often neglected and comes in many different shapes and forms, for example, really rigid processes, too many reports to fill out, micromanagement, strict work hours, policies regarding time off, involved processes when dealing with work expenses, and too many layers of hierarchy to cite just a few.

Instead of trying to identify all the bad signals, I prefer to list the 5 types of autonomy and assign a score from 1 to 5 for each one when interviewing. In my personal order of importance:

How

How I have to work is especially important. Let’s say I’m interviewing for an engineering position. I usually ask such questions as “Am I allowed to choose my own tools?” “Am I required to do TDD or pair programming all the time?” “Am I required to always submit pull-requests before merging any change?” “Am I required to always write commit messages in one particular way?” “Do I have to book meetings with an architect every time I have to start a new nontrivial task?”

Depending on the answer for each of these questions, I can rate the company as zero, where I have no control on how I work, to five, when it’s totally up to me.

When

For me, When I work is just as important as How I work. If a company doesn’t understand that creative work can’t always happen from 9 to 5, I consider that an important issue because they don’t understand the basics of programming or design.

Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date. — Rework

If I think of a solution for a tricky problem when I’m at home, I should be allowed to work on it, but if I spent the night or weekend working on a new idea, I should also be able to get to the office later or take a day off.

Having this flexibility also makes life less miserable when you have to commute. Why not go to the gym before work and skip the bad traffic, leaving the office a bit later? Having that flexibility is great for productivity, and if you are not productive, you will be unhappy.

If I’m required to be at the office from 9 to 5 every day, I would give that company a zero score. If a company has an in-person daily stand-up at 9 a.m., I would also give it a low score.

Where

Where is controversial. Some places have optional office days, but you have to be in the same city. Some places are 100% remote friendly, while others have a strict requirement about being in the office every day.

I enjoy remote work when it’s not as a second-class citizen or an excuse to pay less. If the company has all the means to support a distributed team (and that should include bringing everyone to the same place a few times a year), then I’m all for it; if not, then I have a specific set of questions, but my questions when asking about “where” usually include:

• If I’m required to be in the same city, can I work from home if I need to receive a package or if I don’t feel like going to the office one day?
• If I’m required to be in the office every day, how is the environment? (I personally don’t like really noisy environments.)
• If I need to work from Brazil for a couple of weeks, would that be possible? (I’m Brazilian, by the way.)

With whom

This one is particularly hard to find and is not as important as the others. Sometimes, small companies can’t afford to have people switching projects, and sometimes medium-sized companies have really well-defined departments.

Being able to help assemble the team you will be working with on a particular project can also be helpful. Or just being allowed to request feedback or help from people outside your own team can be nice.

As an example, at IFTTT, we have four well-defined engineering teams, and I’m part of the Web team, but I’m particularly comfortable getting feedback from a few guys from other teams. Whenever I have something tricky on my plate and my own team is not available, I don’t have to request a Scrum Master to book a meeting with a person on the other team. I can just Slack them and ask for help. So, at IFTTT, it’s not that I can always choose with whom I will be working, but that I have all the autonomy I need to do good work.

To get a good sense of “Whom,” you can ask the following questions:

• How often do we have peer reviews, and what happens if someone gets a really bad review from their team?
• How are managers reviewed? (You are basically asking if the team can choose their own manager.)
• Am I allowed to request feedback or help from members of other teams without asking for permission?
• Given the proper schedule and planning, if I know one person is a great fit for a temporary project, would that person be allowed to work with me?

What

This is also very hard to find in small companies. You usually end up working on everything that shows up, but that should not go against your career plans or personal interests.

For example, for a long time, I worked as a designer. I did some project management as well, and I still enjoy that. If I’m going to be in an engineering role, I prefer to be close to designers and product decisions. If I have to write data dashboards, do some Ops, or some low-level tasks, I would be more than happy to help, but if that becomes my main job, then it might not be aligned with my long-term career preferences.

Another example: 10 years ago I decided that I wanted to really learn Ruby, so being able work on a Ruby project was important for me. At the time, if I had landed in a company that assigned me to a PHP project, I wouldn’t have been really excited about it.

Being able to talk about that with your managers is all I need. I personally don’t need a 5 on this topic; 2 or 3 is just fine.

Conclusion

Of course, a place that scores 5 on everything should be looked at with some skepticism. Scoring 5 on everything can be a sign of total chaos or that the leadership doesn’t care. The best way to determine if their culture is producing results is to check their progress over a period of time. If the product or business didn’t evolve in the past year, then you should ask more questions.

Once again, Autonomy is as important as Purpose (the sector), but the score for each topic and the order of importance is absolutely personal, and it also changes based on different moments in your career.