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What do you like about your job?
I'm currently in the process of job shopping and, while it feels like all my friends are happy to tell me why I shouldn't work where they do, I do enjoy hearing from people that are satisfied with their line of work.
I personally like that my current work gives me free reign of the warehouse we operate in, if we met our metrics we could hold a game of poker in the back without too much fuss. What are some qualities in your work that make you a happier employee?
Reasons I like my job:
50% - Decent pay for the amount/kind of work
45% - Remote
5% - all other qualities of life combined
My first impulse was 95% remote, but after a thought, I wouldn't do this remote job if they paid the same as me working as a grocery store clerk, for example. Also implies I think I would really only want to work in person again if they paid twice as much.
"Others" include decent management that doesn't micromanage, other benefits/matching/bonuses etc, "culture". Meaning, I can put up with some work environment abuse if they paid well and I can still work remotely.
are you hiring lol. I'm getting pretty serious with a potential position that trades in-office time for more money, which is a compromise I'm willing to make for enough dollarydoos, but that does sound dreamy...
It has to be a lot of dollaroos, to be honest. -..- the quality of life improvements from never having to be in a commute, no snow removal days, no road rage idiots break checking, no extra detours due to accidents. Just....day ends at 5 and by 5:01 I'm enjoying time with my family. Lunch breaks always with my best friend and flirting with the office cutie (same person) is always great. I don't work with jerks in the office because there aren't any.
Without doxxing myself yes lol look for industry companies and apply through their job listings not job boards. Industries like....the kind your government would hire as contractors for capital projects, or who those contractors then sub contract.
Edit: cheaper car insurance, no gas/electric bills, can eat cheaper groceries because I have more time to cook, cheaper lunches --> factor those into costs as well
Work from home does feel like the dream, but I do have to remind myself that the points you provide make a big difference. I can't let myself get so invested in a single facet that I give up the rest of the balance.
That's the right attitude I think, ultimately there's a lot in the balance that will be just the right mix for you.
For maybe younger people, some would not value working from home as much, to hang out with people at the office or to gain network. For some they need to max wages for mortgage. For some they're just working underemployed so they only care about great coworkers and fun benefits and good company morals etc.
I enjoy teaching, the whole process of helping others grow in meaningful ways. I like seeing others improve on themselves. It brings me great pleasure to take essentially feral children and turn them into individuals capable of reason and empathy. My current age group (4-5 year olds) sees an enormous amount of change within that span, and it's truly an amazing process.
I wish I got paid more.
One thing I really miss about one of my old jobs was getting to cultivate a team out of people who just needed someone to be a resource they could count on, and the more I think about it, growing up was really a lot of team-building. That would be super nice to get to do again. Thank you for all you do as a teacher/educator!
I love trying to build up my coworkers as well! I find it so much more pleasant to work with competent people. I push those around me to better themselves and give their best efforts.
The most frustrating thing to me is when some people just don't care to even try and change, even when shown every which way that change is better.
I was always told a sedentary mind is as unhealthy as a sedentary body. It feels especially relevant lately.
I'm a controls engineer/PLC programmer, but if the person I'm describing my job to is in any way nerdy I tell them I'm a professional wizard - a golemancer to be specific.
I open my spell book (laptop) and prepare a ritual (program) using runes that no one else in my party knows how to interpret (ladder logic). When I cast the spell (download the program) I breathe life into dead Earth (steel and copper) and it does my bidding 24/7 without fatigue. I have golems all over the country!
Programming physical machinery is so much more fun than software to me.
I get a ridiculous amount of freedom because nobody else during installs knows quite what I do (or how quickly I can do it) so I can basically make up any excuse to show up and leave whenever I want.
I travel a lot, which is a negative for some but great for me. I end up in Vegas 2 - 3 times a year, as well as places like San Diego, Nashville, Tampa, etc. I've even considered putting in a "time bomb" in certain programs so they mess up after a few months and require me to fly back... That's kinda crossing the line, but I absolutely could do it.
Most importantly I enjoy all the puzzles. We specialize in interfacing new equipment with old obsolete hardware, so half the jobs we do involve stuff we've never worked with before. Sometimes the entire company is out of business and you can't find a single manual to save your life!
Product knowledge is something I also pride myself on, and it's nice to know you're needed! I really like how you reframed what you do, that'll be something I need to incorporate as a mental habit.
Hey, Im and embedded engineer, for much the same reasons. Its fun to see your program affect something in the physical world so readily.
Like you, I enjoy the flexibility that my company allows. If we have a slow day, taking a longer lunch than usual is no big deal. If the weather is bad or I need to be at home to sign for a package, I don't have to take a day off to stay home.
I also like that they invest in their employees. I recently switched positions within my company and felt that I didn't have enough knowledge of the roll to effectively do my job. The company paid for a training course and the certification exam.
That is a HUGE plus, you're so right! I don't know that I would go back to distribution, but a lot of big hubs near me will provide almost everything but the time to take courses and give their employees a leg-up in their own futures.
I'm a high school teacher, teaching 12-14 years olds (not in the US), currently in my 4th year.
There are so many things I love about my job, but there are a few that stand out:
Freedom : I can really do whatever I want as long as the kids get the required knowledge to go to the next year. If it so happens that I can do the curriculum in 5 months instead of 10 (or in 35 classes instead of 50), then I essentially get free classes where I can do what the fuck I want. I really use that to my advantage and the kids see the difference and I see the difference. This year, I started to offer deals to my groups, like "Look guys, we have X, Y, Z to do, you need to learn this and that for that exam. If everyone passes, we got a fun class on Xth day". They work towards that and basically have a fun class with rewards every ~2 weeks. But you know what I could have done? Not that. I could have taken the extra time for a school outing or just more time for the kids to learn and practice. The planning is hard, but once you get the hang of it, boy is the freedom addictively good.
Impact: I get to shape around 100 kids every year, see their progress, see their failures and ultimately, they get to see that in me as well. I get to teach the next generation and give them the values that took me years to learn. Without fail, every year, I get to directly change at least 5 kids. I get to see their "before" and "after" I've helped them in something. Likewise, there are at least 2-3 kids every year that give me a different perspective in life. I get to see a different set of skills, personality, traits, in a new person, every year. It's wonderful.
Infinite improvement: This one is the source of pain for so many teachers, but I feel like it's the reason so many decide to stay in the profession even after all the pain it can cause. There are few jobs in the world where improvement is infinite as much as teaching is. There are so. many. fucking things you can improve on: vocabulary, tone, posture, introduction, instructions, explanations, exams, interventions, planning, projects... in every aspect, there is a sub-aspect you can improve on, in every sub-aspect, there is another. And after all that, you get a set of 100 new persons every year that you have to deal with, new personalities you deal with, new problems you have to fix, new parents you have to manage. And every time, you learn a little more from every interaction. I look at my last 4 years and I cannot believe the progress I've done and how much better I am from my first year. At the same time, it's crazy to me to realize how much better I'll be in 5, 10, 15 years. I cannot wait for the adventure! I have infinite challenges that I can take on, I can always be better and it's fun to have that. At the same time, I have to freedom to decide where I put my limit, and if I want to, I can just say "fuck it, I'll do the same" and nobody will bat an eye.
As a teacher in the US currently looking for work, thanks for sharing this. I'm early in my career and both my gigs so far have not been good. But hearing someone talk about all the good stuff, the reasons we all got into this profession, helps a lot.
Oh, teachers don't have it good here too. There's a statistic floating around that 50% quit before making it year 5, of that, 50% quit the first year.
You're dealing with little shits that don't give a fuck about you and you expect them to act right and you expect them to listen to your interventions... when it doesn't go as planned, that's where people break... And I don't blame them.
Why would you say the experiences were bad?
Yeah I gotta imagine it's a similar statistic here. I'm a band director so a lot of the things that weren't good were specific to the programs I was leading or a matter of being stuck doing something other than band. When I was doing band, I was overwhelmed. At my second gig I was the only band person in the district. And like, plenty of people are in that situation and they make it work, but it's still a lot.
I had my share of problems with kids too (definitely came home and cried over one little asshole) but the majority of my kids were decent.
Nice idea for a thread! You're right, there's a lot of "here's a list of red flags", nice to see some green ones.
Like many others here, I've got a desk job as a software lead.
I consider myself very lucky with my job, there's a lot of pros.
Communication and culture carriers are two things I undervalued until I got into my current role. Being at the bottom of the totem pole around people who are immoral and defer to pulling rank as a method of resolution has me very appreciative of the opportunities around me.
I'm a software architect. I like that it pays well. Until the past couple of years, the job and industry was very very stable. I have pretty flexible work hours and location, and my company treats me very well. I don't love the overhead/paperwork aspect, and there are politics that get annoying, but I more or less enjoy what I do from a career perspective. It's interesting work, and I continually get to learn as time goes to keep things interesting. That being said, I don't know if I could recommend this to someone not already in this industry because I'm skeptical that demand for software engineering in general will increase with the use of AI.
I had actually planned for a similar field in school, but a multitude of factors changed my trajectory in a way that I think is irreversible. I'm so happy for you that you're able to find a satisfying niche!
Cyber security engineer - there are 3 things I like about this career.
I think those 3 qualities (interest, ethics and pay) are the keys to having an enjoyable job.
(1) Makes the day-to-day interesting,
(2) Keeps the long-term drive, and
(3) Makes it worth it financially.
Interest and ethics are two things I'm really struggling with currently. I went from a solid team that enabled me to feel like I'm making a difference in my community to serving vanity projects under people I wouldn't speak to if I wasn't paid to. At least I know what I lost and can regain, right?
Yeah, I've not always been in this fortunate position. In my experience it's a balancing act that shifts throughout your career. I actually retrained because I didn't see a way to improve doing physics.
My last job change was for the ethics and pay but I lost some of the interest, and I'm in the process of changing jobs again for a big bump in interest in exchange for a small decrease ethically.
In the ideal case, as you get better at your profession you can be more selective over where you work without sacrificing on pay.
It's definitely not a meritocracy though - I had a restaurant job that paid more than my physics researcher one, but I've found keeping some hope and drive to make things better tends to works out in the long run.
I've found lately that my equipment licensing and experience is one of my stronger assets, if only as a fallback.
I've been building a strong resume in the past few years and think I can leverage that into a better offer as I browse my market, even if elements of the work I do would diminish.
Fortunately I live in a relative hotspot for logistics so some level of skilled work will always be available.
Darn near total personal freedom and control of my time.
Never again do I have to wake up at 5:30AM KNOWING as always that I didn't get enough sleep. Never again am I stuck in the field for 16 hours a day, cripplingly unhappy with the utter lack of work-life balance. Goodbye to that years ago.
I work as much or little as I want, when I want for my main income stream (buying at auctions / selling on eBay/FB-Marketplace/Craigslist) and for my secondary income of contract low-voltage work the majority of my jobs are servicing outdoor security tech that require zero customer interaction and have week-long 'do-it-sometime-this-week' time frames.
If I feel like sleeping in past noon? No problem. I feel like starting a contract repair job at 4PM? Not an issue.
On the buying/selling income stream: looking for new inventory to sell is fun, bidding at auctions is fun, and when it comes to testing / repairing electronics - well, that's my hobby and I am managing to make money off it, which is cool. It also sometimes provides something interesting to make a video about for my YouTube channel which is primarily focused on electronics repair.
I get to work from home the majority of the time. I have to go out for auction pickups, but for a lot of the stuff I ship out I can schedule USPS to pick everything up from my front door for free, which is great of them.
That sounds incredible. I respect the hustle, as Proposition Joe would say, "buy for a dollar, sell for two." I actually got my first full-time job at the print shop I went to when I was making money out of high school on eBay.
This is probably the ultimate fallback option, and one I've been suggesting to people in my life who are not afforded as much opportunity otherwise.
If I may ask, what's your YouTube channel's name? I'd love to check it out!
I'm neverendingstudent on YouTube. Thanks for checking out my channel!
Absolutely! I love the name of your channel and have already found several videos I can't wait to watch when I have the time!
Ability to be fully remote, but I usually go to the office once a week, some times more often. Mostly because some stuff is just easier when everyone is physically present. I can pack my office days full of in-person meetings and focus on work on the other days.
Our hiring department is full of magicians, they haven't hired a single miss yet. Every single person I've met at the office or in an office party is someone who passes the "I would talk to this person even on my free time" -test easily. And not a single one has triggered the "how the fuck did this person get hired" -flag.
That sounds like an amazing team y'all were able to cultivate, and that hybrid balance sounds very effective for optimal time management.
I work as some kind of caretaker... My job is to compensate for a body that doesn't work like a "normal" body so that the person can lead a "normal" life.
There are 3 things I really like with my particular place of work:
My work hours: I work full-time, but work 10 double-shifts rather than 20 single-shifts over a 4 week period. This allows me to be completely free 2 weeks out of 4 which is amazing! I'm planning on downsizing my life quite a bit, which will allow me to work even fewer days while maintaining a comfortable life (including saving ~1/6 of my comparatively quite low income).
It's humbling and important for my life to deal with all the ethical implications and boundaries of my work, makes me a better person (or rather keeps me from forgetting a bunch of important stuff and sliding into becoming a worse person)
It's gratifying to witness change in the person where me pushing a micrometer for years has a lot to do with it. When the person realises they are capable of something and that it feels great to do stuff themselves (even if it's faster, smoother if I do it). Helping to give greater autonomy and agency (it is always unwanted until the change occurs)
Having had multiple friends and family members who needed P.T. for months/years, I've been able to see secondhand how the work you do is so valuable! Having a greater goal and being able to create a progress plan is really effective for a positive headspace around a workload.
I'm a security industry instructor. I love teaching my students and seeing all the "Aha" moments, and I only really see them for a week or two, so I get to reuse all my stories and jokes. Win-win.
But the really great part is that when I'm not actively teaching I have a long leash to work on product development, curriculum improvement and pretty much whatever else I want as long as other goals are being met. I get to really stretch my wings a bit, and usually I don't have too many hard deadlines.
Oh, and the pay is better than my last job by almost 50%, while my physical workload is lower by more than that.
I like the breathing room, both from the point of view of instructing and in the freedom outside of the material. With a pay bump like that to boot, it sounds very fulfilling!
I'm apart of the leadership team at the business I work for, and I get to manage and mentor a team of developers, devops, QA analysts, etc. I also get to make big strategic decisions for the software we work on, project we take on. Because of my position I can take some liberties around my personal life - like taking "light" fridays or dipping out early to pick up my kid from daycare.
The business prioritizes people's work-life balance - almost to a point that may seem unfair to those without kids (we are a very family-focused business). But as a dad to a toddler, I love being able to just dip from the office, get my kid, and hang out.
Also we're a hybrid workplace, and a lot of the software we work on is in service of the manufacturing we do so being the office has huge benefits (seeing the thing you make be used), so its not so bad.
Also I live really close to the office so that really helps.
That would be a huge priority for me were I to ever have kids, and it sounds like the people running things at your job know what really matters!
My team.
I work at an MSP as a cloud engineer and generally enjoy the crazy work. Probably 200 clients across our cloud and Azure, so there is always something to do, and it's always different. Even the same problem may need a different fix each time. We all have our strengths, one in governance, the other in experience and networking, I'm the deep-down OS guy (and Linux guy), and support each other. One dude left for more pay and we came together to help him transition and prepare for new teammates easily because we found and fixed a ton of onboarding sore spots.
The pay for my job (entry level consultant) and the fact that I can work from home are bonuses, especially since my area has more employees than seats in the office. I'm technically hybrid but while top brass said they want us in the office, but it won't count against us if we don't go, they just want us networking in-office to help the firm with cross-functionality (a sentiment I truly believe. They do standard business bullshit but this firm also shows it's softer side in genuine ways). I've made huge mistakes or straight up admitted I was over my head and somebody always had my back. And I can take a siesta on a bad day to reset and finish strong
It sounds like any shortcomings of the firm are made up for by a rock solid team, I always did appreciate being able to have faith in my team members' standards.
I spent the first ten years of my life as a firefighter/paramedic in a moderately high volume 911 system. At the end of it I decided I wanted to go back to school to get a better (paying) job, so I left public safety to work as a paramedic in a hospital, while also taking classes. I started out in the emergency department, I now work on the IV team.
I like that even full time, my job(s) have just been a few days a week. I also like that specifically the roles I've picked are ones that not just anyone can do. It gives me fulfillment to be the person with the knowledge and skills who can show up and get stuff done, when others aren't able to. To better illustrate this, many in healthcare choose not to work in an ED as they don't want to be constantly surrounded by the chaos and sometimes critically ill patients requiring fast paced life saving interventions while in an actively chaotic environment. Which I respect, it's not for everyone, but I loved it. Now, on the IV team, I'm sort of the "guy who shows up and puts the line in when we really need it and no one else can". I joked that "in the ED, I had to be good at a lot of things. Now, I just have to be really, really good at one thing." And while my patient facing role can sometimes be frustrating, on the whole, I enjoy making people's lives better. I have some very genuine encounters with people, many who are appreciative for the help being given to them, and when I go home at the end of the day I can often feel good about what I did for others at work.
I can't imagine how fulfilling the work you do and have done must be, some of the most motivated people I have the pleasure of knowing are retired EMTs and they still talk about some of the people they helped in the line of service. The work you do cannot be overstated in value, and thank you for it!
Having also moved from being a jack of all trades to a master of one, it can bring a certain kind of peace of mind, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy the breath of fresh air that another task would provide!
I'm the director of an analytics group for a large multinational manufacturing corp.
Pros:
Cons:
I sympathize with the political aspect, the same 5 colleagues I see every day can make or break my job security, and mindfulness and tact are a must-have in every interaction with them.
Trust has turned into a significant stressor for me, namely trust from leadership. Faith and trust afford a type of bond that I don't think cameraderie or oversight can provide by themselves.
Hyperbolic but better to Rule in Hell than Serve in Heaven vibes.
A very nonstandard environment, a lot of known problems but weird restrictions, not a lot of bureaucratic overhead, and the ability to dive into newer solutions.
It is INSANE how much overhead is caused by tech debt or structuring decisions made years or even decades ago, and how much better many things can be. I think for the level of skill we have and the number of people we have, we are FAR out performing compared to "standard" operations. You can really run lean if you're using your tools right.
What's killer are the number of tools/patterns/etc designed for these giant corporations that expect you to just have a team of 20 people manage X thing, that in a smaller environment that's run well, you just do not need. I feel like in the next 10-20 years as newer companies once again take a bite out of the larger ones due to being able to better leverage current trends and tech we're going to see much smaller teams.
I've been very sensitive to the infrastructure around my work since a bad update got pushed out by our order processing team and stagnated operations for a solid 48hrs. Having the flexibility to work around that, especially by having a team that creates a self-reliance separate from some of those elements you mentioned is a strong asset for any workplace.
Working from home was a huge win for me. I love being around my small kids and covid really pushed me to work 95% of my time from home at my old job, and I got to spend so much time at home with my kid that we didn't need to hire a sitter or send my first to day care before we moved countries. Not many jobs in the country/area I live now are work from home and if I had landed a local job I would have had to deal with some pretty awful traffic.
The pay is also great for my area, I'm earning ~1.5-2x the salary I had seen listed for local jobs that I was qualified for. I miss my old job where I still earned my US salary, but that is only for the salary and some of the teammates.
I list the schedule because after I moved I worked nights or half night half day (10 PM - 2 AM and then project work during the day) which meant I barely slept since I have young kids, and we lived with my in laws. There are months in which I barely remember anything that happened during that time. Now I work daytime hours and the difference is night and day (pun intended).
My company treats us like adults. If I need to run my kids to school or a doctor's appointment, I can do that and make up the time later by working later that day or starting earlier the next day.
I'm a huge fan of the software that my company provides, and I had been using it in my personal life for years. When I saw the job posting, I told my wife it would be awesome if I could work there and ended up landing the job.
I'm super happy in my current job and can see myself staying with this company for many years to come.
That sounds absolutely perfect for you! I learned to appreciate that laissez-faire management style back in high school when a teacher gave us the whole semester's workload at the beginning of the year and showed a lot of transparency in the expectations that were on him for deadlines.
I have absolutely had moments where I was prepared to give up my pay for travel opportunities, only to be forcibly reminded of the end goal of being employed lol.
I'm an operations & finance manager at a small nonprofit, working a part time, hybrid schedule. Most of what I like about my job is the meaningfulness of the work. We do things that actively make the world a better, safer, happier place. My coworkers are nice enough and the pay isn't abysmal, but if I didn't feel like my work had actual meaning I'd be working for one of the many, many tech companies in the area and probably making half again as much. My previous job paid well and had no meaning but bringing in the bucks, and I lost sight of any reason to keep living beyond not making those close to me grieve. Doing this job makes me feel like I'm making a difference, and that makes a huge difference to me.
Something I really cherished in a previous job was the tangible difference I could make on people I would see every day in my community, and to be honest, I agree with you that the effect that has carries a value that money can't make up. I'm trying to be more philanthropic in how I spend and what I do in my day-to-day, but the opportunity to make that my work is something I would love to have again.
The aspects of my job I like:
In the UK I can get 100% of my tax and most of my national insurance back
I get half of the year off
The time I am in work, I am living there and am learning every day, because I'm relatively new to the field.
That sounds amazing, having the freedom of time and untaxed pay! Some of my favorite time when swapping jobs is the training, a good mentor can make a big difference in short/medium term satisfaction.
I work at a pharmaceutical company involved with late-stage research and early-stage development.
Things I like:
Pharmaceuticals is one of the biggest positive impacts a person can make in terms of downriver effects, a career with that kind of significance would be an end goal for me!
I told my boss there's three things that I consider the "legs" of the "stool" that I like about my job. If one of the legs is missing, or one of the legs are too short, then the stool falls over and I'm unhappy with my job. These legs are equal lengths.
I need to reconsider this and evolve it a little, because lately I'm thinking this may not be enough. For example, I like the product, but not necessarily enough of the people working on it. I like my boss, but I don't spend enough time with him. In my mind, that makes those two legs of the stool a little shorter, but not short enough to topple over yet.
I'm with you on the boss and the product - were it just the owner and myself, I could be reasonably happy. I'm largely uninvested in our product but have an allegiance to his leadership style. The legs are getting unbalanced on my stool, so to speak.
Is finding a job as a mechanical engineer not easy? I'd think it'd be in high demand given how common mechanical systems are in our lives and industries like robotics are booming right now.