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Pay vs. Happiness
itri writes "A co-worker recently sent me and article about job burnout. Although it's a year old, the points seemed to resonate well with me. The nutshell of the article is that job burnout is caused by lack of the sense of accomplishment, working for a narcissistic boss, and a conflict between the employers and employee's values. Is it really better working for a company that cares about your satisfaction? Are there any companies like that and (more importantly) are they hiring?"
With respect to your question, I have to say that you are really responsible for your own happiness and 90% of the employers out there do not really care about it. If they are smart, they would want happy employees, but as society moves more towards a service based economy with pre-produced products, there will be less craftsmanship around and less care for average employees as they can be quickly and easily replaced. So, your task is to find the niche that you can provide a well crafted product that those (like myself) will pay more for. I would say that if you are not happy, then change jobs or change careers or go back to school or start your own business.
With respect to pay vs. happiness, its a continuum is it not? There are those that would sell their souls to make the monthly payment on their Mercedes. I personally find that repugnant as it goes against my punk DIY ethos, but to each their own. Some folks simply find the job as a means for money to do other things with their life while others enjoy what they do for a living. I personally like to surround myself with people smarter than I am, have a passion for what they do, and treat them well to keep them around. That way, everybody is happy and things get done.
Incidently, I have three positions I am hiring for:
1) Board certified neurologist willing to relocate.
2) Board certified cardiologist willing to relocate.
You never know, but there are MDs that patrol Slashdot on occasion, so, why not?
3) Most importantly for this forum: A programmer. Can you program for OS X? Have Cocoa experience? Do you know IDL from RSI? If you answer yes to all three of the above questions, I have a job for you. I have my own stuff to keep me busy and happy so I won't be breathing down your neck. You even get to work from home or the lab, it's your choice, but if you are in the lab, you can have access to an incredibly extensive and diverse shared iTunes library and crank all you want. You can also have all the flexibility you want with the hours, I just want the code done within a reasonable amount of time. This is a contract position and you will find me most accommodating to work with.
If the meetings I have with the VCs next week go well, I might be hiring programmers with scientific robotics experience. Stay tuned to the Slashdot journal which gets updates from my blog.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Thoreau said, "A man is only as rich as the number of things he can let alone." Who cares how much money you make if you're so swamped you can't enjoy it? I am considering a career change for this very reason. Life's too flipping short.
Is Steve Ballmer rich? WAY YES! But is he happy? Oh no wait, Steve, get that chair down HEEEEELP!!!
Maslow's hierarch of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_o f_needs) would say that a job can, over time, satisfy an employees physiological needs and safety, however, once these demands are met with money, an employer will look upwards in the hierarchy to love and belonging, and see that he could be doing better. I think that this is what happens, people see that once they are 'safe' from their basic needs, they look to expand both their emotions and themselves as individuals. People wish to do as well as they can, and doing so they look up the pyramid, leading them to change jobs, even if this produces a pay cut, as long as the pay cut allows them to live without any hardship.
Of course you can love what you do and still burnout due to bad leadership, bad environments, crappy salary, etc. But when you already love what you do you know exactly what you want and you know what to shoot for. There are many people out there who don't even know what they want to do.
So the trick is just to find a good place to do what you really love. Everything else falls into place after that. The world is a big place. Unless your specialty is the study of the mating habits of the black-striped vampire burrowing ferret that only lives in a remote region of Mongolia, you usually have choices about jobs.
From my humble experience, these guidelines help with the subject of the article
1. Be at work 10 minutes before time
2. Leave on time or up to 5 minutes after.
3. Don't do overtimes unless it's happening at most once a week and it's paid.
4. Have your own strong principles and be professional, do what you are paid for, but keep in mind rule number 2.
5. When a 'funny' new idea/feature/concept is about to be discussed and possibly implemented, don't go nuts over it. Stay calm, state your view, sit down and shut up. The last part is important because regardless of the undesirability of the idea, if your boss wants it to be implemented, you'll have no choice anyway. Instead of being stressed out, refer to rule 2 and 6.
6. Once work hours ends, forget everything until the next day regardless of the pressure. Work isn't your personal life.
7. Remember that people treat you the way you've allowed them to do.
If you still don't agree with me, do read:
workweek
Average work week in manufactoring
I work government, and while I do like my job, there is no real point in my putting in insane hours. Because in government, everyone has to be treated equally. I work about 45 hours a week, busy all day (and reading slashdot!). If we do raises, everyone gets a 2% raise, or x amount a year. Everyone. Even the people that sit around all day surfing the web. There is no reward for me implementing a system wide VOIP system in 1 month from brainstorm to going live. There is no incentive for me to put in tons of work, except for my own satisfaction, and resume building.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Basically, here's the roughly-a-paragraph version of my career, followed by what I do now:
Started mid-'80s with minor tech jobs and tech/sales jobs for crappy, now out-of-business retailers (Egghead, ComputerTown, etc.). Got hired by a customer to be their admin, spent 6 utterly frantic, insane years there. I worked at all hours of the day and night, dealt with issues constantly, but I was well-paid, respected, and treated well. I loved it. Went to another job as IT manager for an insurance company, paid a lot more money. Loved it and the people, until we were sucked in by a much bigger insurance company. Their strategic plan for us involved firing half the employees and turning it into a branch office. Lost my job there as one of the first overboard (I was management, after all) in mid-'03 after 5+ years - the first 3 solving problems and running operations, the last two having conference calls with my new boss in Minnesota.
After that thoroughly disheartening experience with The System, I decided to give being my own boss a shot. I hung out my shingle in the spring of '04, and managed to eke out a living for the first year. Now, I wouldn't say my success is assured and I'm not making the kind of bank I used to, but I'm really busy, making a good living, and I love my job. My customers are actually grateful for my work, and they trust me to help steer them in the right directions. The experience I had is a real asset for them. And even if this doesn't work out in the long term, I've learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about business, and gotten the chance to actually use all the tech skills I've piled up over the years instead of rotting from the neck up as a PHB.
The downside? Some weeks I can't find enough hours in the week to do everything, some weeks I hear crickets chirping when I sit in my office. And today was supposed to be a family day to go to a museum with my wife and son, but instead I had to finish a proposal in the morning, and then get called in to a customer about a half-hour from here to fix a server whose power supply had failed (installed before my time and soon to be replaced). But you know - it wasn't too bad. Because the proposal is for a nice bit of business, and that didn't take too long. And the other customer knew that I was giving up my personal time to help and they genuinely appreciated it. And appreciation is something that is often sorely lacking in the salaried, 9-5 world. Crises like that don't happen often, and it just happened to be today.
So basically I'm saying that if you want to be happy, consider working for yourself. It's a much better life (at least for me), and it's nice to at least have some measure of control again. The worst case is you'll learn something in failing. The best case is you get to really be in charge of your career.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."