| I want to bring up a slightly different perspective, as an employee of a relatively large corporation -- not a startup. I'll preface by stating that my manager is fantastic. Within our team, we have the capability of collaborating and making decisions amongst ourselves without fear of reprimand from the higher-ups (in effect, shielded by our manager). We don't hold standups. We don't have weekly team meetings. There is no mention of "scrum" or "agile" or "standup" or any management buzzwords. Yet, our domain is relatively complex. Business-centric managers (project managers in particular) have no insight into our day-to-day work partly because of the involved complexity -- we rely on involved mathematics and algorithms to do our job. There is no need for PMs to dig deeper to break things out since we always go above and beyond the plain corporate expectations. This is while my manager (previously individual contributor in a similar space for 20+ years) has never given me a direct order on what to work on. We make decisions based on the team's own best judgments and then act on them to deliver great products. Business guidance (context) is given to us as a team by this fantastic manager, based on his input, derived from the countless meetings he attends on the team's behalf. But we have the final say as to what is important to deliver after informal discussions explaining context -- never in the setting of a meeting: just conversations. This sense of belonging that I feel with my team and the organization goes hand in hand with full autonomy over my work and believing in what we are doing: to deliver the best products we can for the customers. I can't speak for the rest of my team, but I feel this dedication. For me, this is because of two things: a belief that we (within our space, greater than just the team I am a part of) are the best at what we do, and that I feel as though I have the autonomy to act in the way that I believe is best. To address some of the other commenters: sure, it is likely that my contributions affect the company's profits by more than a full order of magnitude, compared to my salary. But I'm happy here in my autonomy, able to live comfortably, and I am able to make a difference based on my own judgment. To me, this is the most important thing for me to keep living happily within my "cult". |