A reader is ready to leave but afraid of landing in an identical cage, here are the interview questions about autonomy that show whether a company actually means it.
Hi Poornima,
I read through your previous posts on the internal transfer and proposing a project. They struck a chord with me. I also wanted to share a post that I read by Elena Verna on how gated employees feel.
I’ve gone through a process similar to the one you outlined: I found the unowned problems, built the side projects, and proposed the work. I got further than I expected. But I’ve hit the ceiling: this structure isn’t changing on a timeline I can wait for, so I’ve decided to leave.
But Elena’s post brought up some fears for me: every company says it wants self-starters who “own outcomes.” How do I tell from the outside which ones actually mean it, instead of quitting one cage for an identical one with a better mission statement?
Sincerely,
A Senior Software Engineer Who Is Ready to Leave But Afraid to Land Somewhere Identical.
First, congratulations and I mean that. Choosing to leave after you’ve genuinely tried to change a place from the inside isn’t quitting. It’s data. You ran the experiment my last two posts were about, and the structure won. That’s worth knowing, and a lot of people struggle with initiating that experiment.
Now to your real question, which is the sharp one: how do you avoid landing in an identical cage?
Why your fear around a lack of autonomy is well-founded
Start there, because the fear is rational. Elena Verna wrote recently that most companies are built on a command-and-control model: access gated by titles, decisions hoarded at the top, a whole tier of managers whose job is to shuttle information up and down the chain. The part worth sitting with is this: those same companies will tell you, sincerely, that they want high-agency people. They’re not lying to you. They’ve just built a structure that quietly strangles the exact thing they say they want.
Which is why “we want owners” tells you nothing. Everyone says it. The most gated orgs in the industry say it loudest.
So here’s the reframe. Elena was writing to the leaders who can rip that structure out. My hunch is that you’re not interviewing to become one of them. You can run her diagnosis in reverse: from the outside, looking for evidence that the cage was never built or it has already been dismantled.
And the interview is where you collect that evidence.
Read the behavior to suss out autonomy, not the values
An interview isn’t just an evaluation of you. It’s your diagnostic of the company. Especially in an early phase like the recruiter screen, you’re not trying to win the offer yet. You’re trying to find out whether this is another gated org wearing a ‘we move fast’ t-shirt.”
So read the behavior, not the values. And the first behavior you can read is the interviewer sitting across from you. There is such a thing as a bad interview, and it’s a signal, not noise.
- Do they open by making you feel like a person they’re glad to talk to or a suspect worth interrogating? How a company treats you while it’s still trying to win you is the best version of how it’ll treat you once it has you.
- Do they take a minute to explain the mission, the role, and what the day-to-day actually looks like, even if the honest answer is “it changes constantly”? An interviewer who can’t describe the role is telling you the org runs on vague mandates. One who can describe the chaos honestly is telling you they trust their people to operate inside it.
- Look at how the questions are built. Do they flow and build on each other, with enough room to actually answer? Or are they lobbing disconnected puzzles to check for technical depth and nothing else? A thoughtful interview loop is itself a small proof that the people who designed it think in systems and a place that thinks in systems is more likely to let you think in systems too.
The interview questions about autonomy to ask when it’s your turn
When they hand the time over to you, I know you won’t waste it on perks and PTO 😉
Focus on running these four moves:
1. Ask questions that expose the real structure, not the stated one.
The useful ones force a concrete example or a number because anyone can recite a value, but only an honest culture can produce a specific instance.
- “Tell me about a decision someone in this role made recently that, two years ago, would have gone up to a manager.” If they can’t name a real one, it doesn’t happen.
- “How did the last big project here actually start, whose idea was it, and what did it take to get a yes?” You’re listening for whether ICs propose work, or only receive it.
- “What would I have access to on day one, versus what I’d have to earn over time?” This is Elena’s title-gated access, asked out loud.
- “When a launch flops, what happens to the person who made the call?” Autonomy bundled with blame isn’t autonomy. It’s a trap with your name on it.
- “How many sign-offs does a typical decision in my scope need?” Count the approval cycles directly.
2. Treat the process itself as data.
Watch whether your interviewers have any autonomy of their own. If every one of them defers: “I’d have to check with my manager,” that’s a preview of your life there. Notice the shape of the loop, too: a genuinely flat, fast company tends to run a flat, fast process, while seven rounds gated on a final VP sign-off is the org showing you exactly how it makes every decision. And ask to talk to a would-be peer, unsupervised. Then ask them the only question that matters: “When was the last time you just did something differently without asking permission and what happened to you?”
3. Know your own flavor of agency before you go looking for it.
Autonomy isn’t one thing. As you create interview questions about autonomy know what you need and craft questions around those needs. Choosing your own projects, holding real decision authority, getting access to context, being free of approval chains, those are different freedoms, and you’re probably starved for one or two of them specifically. Work on naming them explicitly: then write them down! It keeps you asking targeted questions instead of chasing a vibe, and it stops you from discovering six months in that you got the kind of autonomy you didn’t actually want. Which leads to the part nobody likes to hear: Elena’s reminder that agency comes with accountability. If the call is yours, the flop is yours too. Make sure you want the bill, not just the title.
4. Lock it in at the offer, not after.
Negotiate scope the way you negotiate comp. What decisions are mine to make? Who do I report to, and how often? What do I own outright in the first 90 days? If they can’t put any shape to it while they’re still trying to win you, that vagueness is the answer and it never gets clearer after you sign.
Be wary of the trap underneath the trap before asking interview questions about autonomy
One last thing, because it’s the one that catches good people: stop sizing companies by their stage or their name. A scrappy startup can be every bit as gated as a hundred-thousand-person giant: a founder who hoards every decision, a team that can’t move without them. And a big, boring company can hand a team real rope. The logo tells you nothing. The behavior tells you everything.
Elena ended her post by asking leaders how fast their company could decide to change. You’ve already answered the only version of that question that was ever yours to answer: you decided. So the work that’s left is simpler than it feels. Walk toward a place that’s already built the way you want to work and not toward a nicer logo bolted onto the same cage.
Keep this one for later, because you’ll use it again: organizations don’t hold still. They change hands, they grow, they drift with the times. The place that fits you the day you join can, a few years on, either grow alongside what you need or grow away from it. When that day comes, the move is the same one you’re making right now: remember that your agency is yours, and recalibrate to what you need next. Go back and review the interview questions about autonomy to see if they’re still applicable or need to be modified as you’ve grown in your career.
Read the behavior. Then decide your next step.
Every post here starts the way this one did: with a reader’s question. If you’re in the thick of it, whether that’s feeling stuck, weighing a move, or trying to size up a company from the outside, come along. I write about the climb from engineer to technical leader every issue: getting heard, getting unstuck, and knowing when it’s time to move on. Subscribe to my newsletter here, then hit reply with your own situation. The most universal ones become the next post.
