An interesting exchange on HN about "agency":
Early in my career Steve Bourne gave me useful advice, he said the difference between junior engineers and senior engineers was that senior engineers had an agenda. More specifically they had an execution goal (like write a new file system, or create a product that solves problem 'X') and they worked toward it. (...) The alternative to having an agenda is "Goofing off and waiting for someone to give you a task."
And the counterpoint:
The bimodal distribution of effort is really true, although people flip from one side to the other based on circumstances. Companies want people who (a) give a shit, but (b) are willing to subordinate their own career goals (including the long-term goal of becoming really good at engineering) to corporate objectives for a long (more than 3 months) period of time. The reality is that such people don't exist.
So the takeaway seems to be that people will flip from agency to non-agency depending on circumstances. When you're lucky enough to get encouragement from others while pursuing your own interest, you'll seem more agent-like.
Seems to me that companies want high-agency employees, but for sufficiently high values, "high-agency employee" is almost an oxymoron. If a person is very-high-agency, why shouldn't they start their own company and keep all the profit? The mere fact that someone agrees to be your employee suggests that a) they are missing some important skills, and b) they cannot compensate for the missing skills e.g. by paying someone else to do it.
OK, in real life I can imagine reasons why a very-high-agency person would become an employee. Maybe the company ha...
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