Why do you like your job?

I haven't worn pants while working in nearly a decade.
Sounds like a small thing, but working from home for this long, no commute, no pants, just a shirt and a smile each day is gold. I'd probably require something like doubling my salary to get me back into an office on a regular, not daily, basis.

The best part of my job is probably the lack of take-home stress. In general, I show up in the morning, find out my list of tasks for the day, perform them (while sprinkling in slack-off time as appropriate to better fill my dance card), and then go home.

Very rarely does a task span multiple days for me, and only occasionally do I even get a heads-up about what's coming in the future, so there's no real need to worry about it. Honestly, the worst part of my day is when I'm getting right near the end of my tasks and someone comes to squeeze one (or two, or three, etc.) more in before the end of the day.

High salary (the reason I moved here), close enough to home to commute by bike (not even forced to go to office), not too hard in terms of responsibilities, relaxed enough to not measure my time. Nice coworkers.

Although I have to say, the new management is ruining many of the things I like.

I work in higher ed in a non-clinical social work role

• I get to help people who are struggling.
• I make a tangible difference in young people's lives, sometimes literally saving them.
• I'm working with new adults and it's an age that is so pivotal in their development but also they've got much better grasps of who they are. I just like this age group.
• I'm good at it, really good.
• I got recognized my first year here as the best new staff member in the division. Recognition matters!
• I have spoken up and made a difference in policy, procedure and language with the aim of improving the inclusivity and accessibility of campus. This included making sure my own housing was accessible. Being heard demonstrates that my knowledge and expertise is valued.
• My work, while stressful, does not make me feel guilty for taking time off when needed or wanted. My coworkers push me to take that time the same way I push them.
• My coworkers have supported me during some of the toughest times in my life and vice versa.
• I work for and with people who broadly share my values. (The institution is under a lot more pressure to not share those values but we're managing.)
• During COVID, we worked really hard but were under our capacity. No one was laid off or furloughed or anything to save money. We had extra quarantine work but my director worked to make sure every single task wasn't piled on us for being the few people physically on campus/in office.

I work outside for a non profit land trust, it doesn’t pay much but I’ve worked my way into this company to finally get full-time benefits so I can actually survive while doing what I love.
I feel blessed to be able to be outside all day, I use a lot of power tools and noisy stuff, but they bought me Bluetooth ear protection so I’ve been enjoying a lot of audiobooks. I am getting experience using all kinds of equipment (or toys some might say), and I get to stare at bugs and plants and birds….
The cons are a 50 minute commute and I have to get up at 5 am (and again, I make less than $50k), but it’s worth it to me to be able to pull into the preserve and be able to call it my office.

I like that the organization is doing good work. They're a nonprofit, they have a clear vision, and they're fulfilling on that vision. I don't like much else about my job right now, but I still like that.

Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.

Or to be less glib, while far from perfect, I can make significant impact in how things work. Things have changed drastically in my time here, and I know for a fact my efforts are a part of that. That combined with being able to do things quickly (sometimes) because we abhor any overhead (too much...) can be nice. No "set a meeting with 5 people who don't need to be there so we can discuss the kickoff that's just the thing we already said we'd do". Just a "hey i'm going to try this, we good?" with a couple of yes/no's and we're off.

It also comes with the freedom to find the proper solutions rather than just the currently approved ones because vetting and implementing something isn't behind months or years of meetings, and means it's actually worth my time to play with new tech and try things out because if something is good I can bring it to my work environment.

Oh my lord, just being treated like a human being is a blessing. I've worked in 8 or 9 different jobs, and this is the first one where, top-to-bottom, everyone's working to keep it human and non-toxic. There's a lot of other stuff I could go on about, but the main thing is flexibility and humanity. Helps that the founder and original CEO is an incredibly wholesome guy to start things off.

I work as an emergency RN.

I like it because I’m interested in pathology and emergency medicine in general. I also love adrenaline, and I feel badass doing cowboy shit all night without getting flustered.

I also really, really enjoy being a demographic that is largely underrepresented in medicine. I’m mixed race, modified (piercings, full of tattoos, crazy hair + some heavy mods), queer presenting individual who has a lot of empathy for folks who are going through it (drugs, houselessness, etc). I’ve done it long enough that I know how to push providers to do more for those who need an advocate because they can’t do it themselves.

I’m well equipped to deal with unsavory personalities, and if patients start out disrespectful you bet their ass they won’t be by the time I’m done with them. I’ll still provide A+ care but with firm boundaries, I don’t put up with bullshit.

Finally, I don’t have a strong sense of smell lol

It’s a fun job, and it is damn good pay for only a two year degree.

I'm a software engineer who works on contracts for NASA. So far for my whole career I've been lucky enough (or maybe privileged enough) that I've never been subjected to a culturally toxic environment--I've always liked all most of my coworkers, never had unreasonable managers or coworkers, always felt appreciated, and never really had to deal with interpersonal conflicts or drama. The main thing that sets my current job apart from most of my previous ones is that a) I work from home full-time (which has both pros and cons, but mostly pros), and b) I think the stuff I'm working on is actually neat. Everything I've ever built as a back-end engineer could probably be boiled down to "complex spreadsheets for managing data," but right now the data I'm writing management code for is cool shit like the CAD models and service/expiration life cycles of equipment and gear that astronauts use. In space. So fucking cool.

I'm the technical lead at a small company, and it means that I wear a lot of hats. Some days I'm building websites, debugging applications, or managing servers. Other days I'm dissecting email deliverability issues, or working with clients to solve problems from the simple to complex.

Today I get to build an old school form for a legacy website, and I'm finding all my old PHP knowledge is coming back to me. Yesterday I helped set up Cloudflare security rules to help fight off some persistent credit card spammers. We've had a cat and mouse game going for weeks. I keep blocking them, and they keep finding workarounds.

The variety of experience helps keep my skills fresh in an ever-changing tech landscape, and I have to imagine the reduced monotony helps me stave off burnout.

In terms of downsides, it can be stressful at times, and this position has no room for advancement. I also have no one above me to learn from, so it requires self-motivation to adapt to changing tides.

But for upsides, I get to work from home, set my own hours, and I like my boss a lot. All in all, it's hard to imagine myself leaving.

I work as a part-time private teacher. I'm actually going through classes right now so I'll qualify as a substitute teacher in public schools some time in the future. I honestly don't know how I'd manage doing it full-time though because that would require me to remember way more names and faces than I'm confident I'd be able to.

The thing that keeps me going overall is knowing that my work matches my ethics. I'm not involved in selling widgets that are making the world a worse place or in separating fools for their money (though it's arguable that the management probably is doing that), but I'm actually getting paid to help kids accomplish things. The nice thing about my particular situation is that the kids actually want to be there and are usually pretty highly motivated; I'm honestly very impressed at what some of them accomplish! And when I get someone saying "thank you" for doing my job, it's not just some social obligation; they actually mean it. I've gotten hugged! It's the best part.

For the most part I am teaching kids how to program, and it's the first time that I've ever done shared or pair programming that wasn't a pain in the ass. Removing the expectation that the person I'm paired up actually knows what they are doing or will carry their own weight will have that effect, I guess. 😅

I was made redundant somewhat recently (though I'll start at a new place in October, so everything is well), but I mostly liked the relatively low pressure put on me. While there were things expected of me, I could make my own schedule and we made a decision as a team that we're goal oriented rather than "butts in seats for 8 hours" oriented. It made my life flexible with a young daughter and allowed me to spend more time doing what I wanted to do and figure out what I thought would bring value.

Additionally, the secondary employment benefits are something I'll miss at my next employer. The company owned a gym next door (or rather had a subsidiary manage that, but still) which allowed me to work out with my colleagues when I wanted. Hour long lunch breaks aren't that common here but I got used to them rather quickly and really utilized them as much as I could by either going for a run when working at home, or just having a good in house lunch at the company restaurant.

My job itself though.. I think it's rather meaningless. I enjoyed being able to see deficiencies and improve on those, but ultimately I wasn't necessary for the day to day.

I've never been passionate about work and it has always been a means to an end. The next job will be the same. For me it's about what the job provides me, not the other way around.

It accommodates to my needs and provides a useful product. I can't imagine finding another job that is both fully remote and isn't carefully watching every mouse click to ensure "optimal/maximum" productivity. And even though I work from a computer, I can meaningfully impact the safety and reliability of our electric grid.

Even though, yes, it lets me survive, money is the problem. I make enough to be comfortable, but not enough to secure a house, even though that'd be cheaper than rent and I've saved up for a solid down payment.

I'm in a senior communications role that works with educators in a higher ed institution. Pay is fine, flexibility is amazing and I'm free to design the role as I see fit. Great pension if I stay on for another 15 years and room to grow at the institution.

...and I'm trying to leave for some reason.

The prospect of working at the same place in the same set of jobs for my whole career feels stifling, despite it being dependable and full of great people, I finished a grad degree in urban planning a number of years ago and time is running out to make something of it.

I feel crazy for starting over but I'm drawn to it for reasons beyond my understanding.

My job is essential.

It’s potentially personally identifiable info so I won’t elaborate too much, but my job feels like a small but critical piece of human society. If I don’t do my job, someone else will have to. If everyone involved refused enough times, society will legitimately collapse.

It’s not glorious work, and oftentimes it isn’t interesting. Yet it’s hugely motivating to know that every day I get up, I’ll be helping to prevent some cog in our societal machine from rusting up and breaking.

It's generally fairly low stress and I can slack off quite a bit. I only really work past 5 maybe once every two or three months when something important happens that's specifically my fault/responsibility. I'd still prefer if it were fully remote, though, (and I actually 100% used to work harder until they made us switch to 3 days in office instead of fully remote in 2023).

Amazing pay and benefits help me put up with a lot of garbage at my job.

That said, I'm in fitness and tech sales, so the best part of the job itself is all the members who come back and tell us how our company has changed their lives. That never gets old.

I'm in management, so seeing people I hire and train come into their own, find success and then either keep finding success or moving on to be successful somewhere else is endlessly rewarding.

I work in IT for the government. Even though I work for a large agency, the group I work with is small. And so is our network, which is not part of the main network. We're completely separate. This setup is very much akin to a small business network, which is almost entirely my background in my so-far ~20yrs career.

As such, I like that there's not a lot of red tape when it comes to what we want or need to do on the network and associated infrastructure. If a problem arises, we have pretty wide latitude to use whatever solutions -- as long as it's researched and well-reasoned -- to fix it. If we have ideas on how to improve things, same thing applies.

We also have lots of flexibility and we can be agile. We can get a lot of broad experience fairly quickly with various technologies, systems, and programs. Even our roles are fairly fluid.

That's not to say there aren't downsides; there are absolutely some. Sometimes people change things without telling others. Sometimes people move fast and break things too quickly and too often. We tend to be jacks of all trades, masters of none. Managing it all can be difficult since we don't have the fancy tools that a bigger network and userbase would/should have. And more.

But I think the tradeoffs are worth it.

I like my job. But my job never really liked me, and they very much don't like me nowadays.

Laid off game developer/programmer. I'm still making games, but freelance. All this made me realize I really gotta go indie one day if everyone just wants to kick me out every other year. If nothing else, I appreciate it's one of the few remaining arts where you can potentially make ends meet without any employer overhead (granted, few do. It's hard to really launch yourself in these days).

Otherwise, yeah. I like the challenge programming brings. They payoff in games in seeing your character move or the graphics/performance improve is very satisfying. Ideally I'd love to do it as long as I'm breathing, but who knows what life has for me.

Software engineer - I like how I'm tackling problems and not just writing code, but also thinking about maintenance of the code in the long run. That said, I do think that eventually I'd prefer to do something like this in a more scientific setting (research software engineer, or even R&D with some coding), but for now I'm more than content.