I’ve always wondered what makes a job satisfying. Yeah, it varies from person to person. What about features that are true for everyone? What about this, for example?
For a while at Amazon, I was the Manager of Website Performance and Availability. . . . Whenever something went wrong, and some chunk of the site got slow, I tracked down why and got people to fix it. Each week I wrote a report summarizing everything that went wrong in excruciating detail, and presented it to a room of directors and VPs in a weekly metrics meeting. It was as sisyphean a task as any you can possibly imagine. In a software system as large, complex and constantly changing as amazon.com, something is always going wrong. . . . My job was to make a list of irritating things each week, and I was widely regarded as having done it as well as anyone ever had. . . .I found this job to be the most soul-crushing work I’ve ever done. I totally burned out in a year, as did the person who held the job before me.
I tell you this story as a cautionary tale. Try to find work that allows you to focus on positive things. Avoid like the plague any work that focuses on negative things.
that job sounds exciting. very similar in what i used to do as a tech support engineer. big challenges – technical and otherwise – helping people – working with people, a sense of urgency, you get to be proactive, eventually working to reduce complexity and up reliability. good stuff.
but it sounds like it was stressful and probably required a lot of overnights. i never had that. we were usually able to fix our probs, and if not, it was never mission critical or something we could fix by completely swapping out software/hardware – we didn’t have 50,000 computers.
a good manager is clutch to having a ‘good job’. someone who believes in human dignity.
having a say in decision-making is important – a little democracy in the work place instead of the totalitarian top-down approach that most of us are used to right now. so, co-ops are a good model. look for the fascists and corporatists and Republicans to vilify co-ops as they continue to grow in popularity. here’s a good example of one:
https://www.blackstar.coop/
and, increasingly, people are starting to realize that having some time to play with their kids, visit and take care of their parents, go to church, volunteer, make love to their spouses, plant some veggies in the community garden, etc. are important – so ‘full time’ jobs with 30-hr work weeks will increase, as will people’s happiness and satisfaction with their jobs.
having a say in decision-making is important – a little democracy in the work place instead of the totalitarian top-down approach that most of us are used to right now. so, co-ops are a good model. look for the fascists and corporatists and Republicans to vilify co-ops as they continue to grow in popularity.
I guess I am a fascist-’corporatist’-Republican because I have always observed that too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.
Well about that broth, it really all boils down to who calls the shots (doesn’t it always) – and I see the traditional top-down management structures as inherently dysfunctional, where authority is fear-based and coercive rather than one fostering an atmosphere of mutual respect – that actually capitalizes on human dignity, and actually benefits a company with greater individual output and much less turnover. Peter only mentioned “a little democracy” – so not sure why that’s too much to mention. The reality is that we’re supposed to justify our pay to the stockholders/owners or a company – and the quality of management and culture they engender truly do matter. When I hear the usual crappola such as “don’t bring problems, only solutions” – then you know the company has slothful types running the show (a disservice to the true owners). You can have the most skilled kitchen staff, and provide the best stove and appliances – but if the head chef ignores the remarks and stressors in making the broth, it’ll come out spoiled excepting sheer luck. The typical replacing of one inept chief for another will procude no better results – since a good leader listens to his staff and allows them the freedom to do what they’re supposed to for the sake of all, and especially the owners.