your manager likely has some rubric for how they'll measure your success.
it may not even be explicitly formulated in their mind, but they have some sort of subjective/qualitative set of expectations. instead of going through the work of precisely defining those expectations and communicating them to the employee, they "empower" the employee to "set their own definition of success".
however, this turns into a game of the IC guessing what the manager wants to hear, which results in two problems:
- if you guess correctly, the manager is happy because they didn't have to go through the work of defining and communicating their expectations and they get to pretend that they are generous and letting employees "drive your own development"
- if you guess incorrectly, you better hope that you accidentally meet the secret rubric your manager has in their head because you know that that's what is used to evaluate performance and determine raises/promotions regardless of what's written down in your quarterly KPIs
your manager likely has some rubric for how they'll measure your success.
it may not even be explicitly formulated in their mind, but they have some sort of subjective/qualitative set of expectations. instead of going through the work of precisely defining those expectations and communicating them to the employee, they "empower" the employee to "set their own definition of success".
however, this turns into a game of the IC guessing what the manager wants to hear, which results in two problems:
- if you guess correctly, the manager is happy because they didn't have to go through the work of defining and communicating their expectations and they get to pretend that they are generous and letting employees "drive your own development"
- if you guess incorrectly, you better hope that you accidentally meet the secret rubric your manager has in their head because you know that that's what is used to evaluate performance and determine raises/promotions regardless of what's written down in your quarterly KPIs