I know a little kid who was the son of a family friend and who grew up to become a smart young man and high school valedictorian. Jonathan said in his valedictory address something insightful: "Work does not necessarily make you happy but it may give you the means to be happy."
Don't put all your eggs in one basket, one dream job, one relationship. Treat your job as a good friend, don't become too emotionally involved with it. Don't just get a paycheck from your job - if you do, you are underpaid. Do things outside of work. If you work with computers all day and you don't do other stuff that does not involve computers, consider new hobbies that pertain to interests. For example, if you like sexy iPhone app UIs like on http://wellplacedpixels.com, consider going to an art gallery with friends to see what kind of art is out there and why you like certain pieces of art.
There's a running joke among my friends that I "can't hold down a job" more than a year or two, and for completely different reasons than most. Reading this post makes me wonder if that's why. I like changing things for the better. Not necessarily because something is new, but more for the customers and employees. Where I am now I can't do that, except in the smallest increments. I feel like I have the potential to do so much, but the red tape and flexibility just isn't helping.
I changed jobs regularly about every 18 months for the first 10 years of my career, for mainly the same reasons as you do. What I found was that I would start a new job with a lot of hopeful optimism, immediately making huge amounts of progress, impressing my co-workers and managers with my hard work and new and improved approaches to problem solving. After 90% of the low hanging fruit improvements had been implemented, the last 10% would be hung up by red tape, unflexible co-workers, bad management, and the general suckitude that almost every company has.
I would get frustrated and start looking for greener pastures. After doing this for the first several years, I realized this approach was better as a contractor than a full time employee. I did contracting for several more years, until I found a company that just "sucked less" than the others I'd worked for.
One thing you will learn as you have more experience: All companies suck to work for (unless you started it yourself). Some just suck less than others. Try to find one that you can at least tolerate the suckage. When I get bummed out about idiotic co-workers, management that doesn't know what the hell they're doing (example: no backup generators for a data center with $millions in equipment), I just close my eyes and try to meditate on the six figure salary and five figure annual bonus. That usually makes me forget how much it might suck at the time. Oh, and the fact that I still get to play architect and design some cool systems.
Thanks for the great advice. I've been considering breaking out and doing my own contracting, and have done it before, but I'm in need of stability. Hopefully I'll find that place that just 'sucks less' soon; it just hurts to be in what others would consider 'the perfect job' and feel so empty. Good to hear I'm not the only one that struggles with this.
I think I've got my dream job, but three years ago I said the same thing about the last job, and three years prior I said the same thing about the job before that, so your guess is as good as mine what my dream job will be three years from now.
One thing I liked about this article is that it's not about "working on technology X" or "making a lot of money" or "having a great title", but about challenge, learning, and passion.
I finally realized last year that my dream job is having a bunch of kids and helping them grow into adults. In a way, it's not so different from Gary's dream job.
could you comment on how things have changed for you over the years?
I matched your dream job with patio11's comment :
"I think I've got my dream job, but three years ago I said the same thing about the last job, and three years prior I said the same thing about the job before that, so your guess is as good as mine what my dream job will be three years from now."
I grew up as a smart kid with an aptitude for math and computers, much like my dad and my oldest brother. Went through high school, college, and grad school wavering between math and computer science, thinking some sort of math-with-computers would be my dream job. During grad school I made my first big shift: I realized I really liked teaching, and thought I might become a math teacher.
Shortly after, I participated in a program that paired me with a public school teacher. I liked working with the kids, but I felt like I was out of my depth (didn't have proper training to work in the classroom) and the teacher didn't like me personally (my politics weren't acceptable to her.) Here, I made my second big shift: I realized I liked teaching, but I didn't like schools, either in terms of their structure or the prevailing politics.
I ended up burned out, left grad school, and got a low-paying job teaching in an aerospace museum. Here, I had solid training, and nobody ever got on my case about my political views. At first I was disappointed that I wasn't using the skills I'd developed in grad school, and I began to envision some sort of software/systems engineering position as my dream job (my wife is a systems engineer.) Over time, I realized I didn't really care that much about the specific math or engineering stuff I'd done, I just wanted to do something worthwhile, and inspiring future generations was just as worthwhile as building airplanes.
It was in this context that my wife and I started talking seriously about having kids. Over the course of many months, we'd discussed all sorts of strategies for avoiding child care -- me working 4 10's with her part time, or both of us working 3 11's on alternating days, or all sorts of crazy schemes. Eventually I realized: when we had this discussion, she was really enthusiastic about her career, while I was really enthusiastic about kids. One of us made the suggestion that she could work full time and I could watch the kids, teach them, and be a "domestic engineer" (that is, create processes and systems to run the household), and I realized we'd just described my dream job.
So for me, it was a process of convergence -- several steps leading me closer to the realization that this is what I want to do with my life. I don't think it'll change in the same way patio11's dream job changes every 3 years (but good call on citing that comment; it was what originally inspired me to respond.)
I did that for the last 18 months and have recently taken a temp (6 month) programming gig to amass some capital before I revert to crumbbumhood.
On the one hand - the professional slacker lifestyle is pretty brilliant: youu sleep when you're tired, work on whatever you like, and you can finally get that stack of books read.
On the other hand - the lifestyle can be somewhat isolating, especially so when you find that everyone else is asleep when you're awake. It becomes too easy to lose yourself in tangents, endlessly exploring to eternal infecundity.
So - while I agree - it is a great lifestyle - I make one small addendum: to be "magically unemployed" along with two or three other persons whose interests all overlap.
I like that quote. Also, sometimes, what you want is not what you need. (that's also my philosophy when meeting with clients: even when they "know" what they want, I try to find out what they really need)
Don't put all your eggs in one basket, one dream job, one relationship. Treat your job as a good friend, don't become too emotionally involved with it. Don't just get a paycheck from your job - if you do, you are underpaid. Do things outside of work. If you work with computers all day and you don't do other stuff that does not involve computers, consider new hobbies that pertain to interests. For example, if you like sexy iPhone app UIs like on http://wellplacedpixels.com, consider going to an art gallery with friends to see what kind of art is out there and why you like certain pieces of art.