The Dream Job That Wasn’t
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newrepublic.com
In SGTCIU, he really goes deep on the idea that pre-existing passion is unlikely to lead you to a happy career and presents an alternate, more-compelling framework for job satisfaction.
1. Acquire rare & valuable skills (career capital) 2. Use said career capital in exchange for job / life properties you care about (remote work, working less hours, working for 'better' companies, higher pay, more autonomy, managing more people, w/e those are for you).
There are happy & fulfilled people in every career and, of course, unhappy people in every career / walk of life. But pretty much everyone wants the same thing in their career: mission, autonomy, impact, and creativity.
These traits ^ are mostly independent of a specific job / field
There’s another model I use that I’ve found to be pretty accurate for most people: SCARF.
Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.
You might be the team captain but there’s likely another athlete who’s better. Status is driven by comparison and, as Teddy Roosevelt said, comparison is the thief of joy. Beyond that, it means putting stock largely into what other people think which can be in a natural juxtaposition to autonomy
I feel extremely blessed, as I have held a series of "dream jobs": 1) video game studio owner at age 17; 2) graphics researcher working for Mandelbrot on his research in '83; 3) Beta Tester for the original Macintosh; 4) 3D graphics researcher back when how to do 3D graphics was unsolved research; 5) video game console OS developer (3D0 & first PSX), 6) video game lead engineer (15 years), 7) I was one of the first people to get Live Interactive Video working on the Internet (Rotor Communications, '99), 8) VFX digital artist & developer for 9 major release feature films; 9) I pioneered and global patented Deep Fakes back in '08 (trying to commercialize that bankrupted me, I was trying to launch Personalized Advertising); and today 10) I'm lead developer of one of the leading facial recognition systems used by 3-lettered organizations world wide.
I get these positions by being irritatingly enthusiastic, technologically deep when first meeting the interviewers, and I try to get right into what their immediate problems to be solved and try to engage in that solution during my interviews. If given make work for evaluation, I simply refuse and ask them what problems they are actually facing: let's solve one of those. This gets the actual problem solvers engaged and I can judge them and they can judge me in our compatibility when problem solving. I tend to cinch the deal trying to get tje job by including 360 degree financial, long term maintenance, and a schedule for planned enhancements achieving expense reduction when executing whatever solution. I tend to minimize having an MBA, because my development achievements speak for themselves; but when I close with financial managers assessment of the company and act like the prospect of working there will be good for them, they tend make an offer. I never act like I need the job. I act like they need me, and without me they would face me working for their competition. Basically, I act like a force, and they can have me on their team of they want. Yes, this is arrogant; it is intentionally so. In many ways, I find I need to treat management like an asshole peer, and be an asshole right to them, and suddenly I'm their favorite guy. People are strange.
I suspect that jobs in a TLA are closer to the Laundry files than James Bond.
Those “three letter agencies” may offer resources and projects that one would struggle to find elsewhere.
To some people, being a Marine is a dream job. To others, that lifestyle would be soul-crushing.
My work in facial recognition is partially because I can do the work at all, few can, and I also do this work to know what it is, it's capabilities and limits, so I'm not in the dark and can influence it's use. I'm an ethical person, and I voice my ethical concerns constantly, insuring the systems cannot be easily abused.
These traits ^ are mostly independent of a specific job / field'
I think this is untrue. It depends on how one understands mission, autonomy, impact and creativity whether they can be achieved independent what specific job one works. If by creativity you mean self-expression, few jobs give you the space for true self-expression, rather than expression within the confines of instrumental problem-solving. If by autonomy you mean the ability to choose one's own tasks then, again, few jobs allow that. If by impact you mean the probable consequences one's work will have for the good of humankind, then clearly one can - and people do - try and rank more and less impactful work, among which there is wide variance. There are a small number of jobs which are extremely high-impact, e.g., working on nuclear proliferation, public health in the global south, climate change. Most jobs have a real but comparatively mundane impact. 'Mission' is entirely relative to the person, not the job.
Both creativity and working at the edge of your ability can create flow states. Being lost in the moment might be what both of these are ultimately after
In any case I think it's a mistake to become too transfixed by what features of work are most conducive to happiness. Yes, happiness is important. Perhaps it's the single most important criteria for choosing a line of work. But there are other, larger objectives - e.g., helping humankind, producing great things, being authentic to oneself, and leading a good life.
I think it’s a mistake to focus on happiness because it’s a mind state and by definition transitory. With that said, I think you can cultivate happiness without checking all those boxes because we can affect our mind state by deliberately choosing our perspective. From that stance, almost any job can lead to happiness. I also think those other things you mention are the means to continuing on with a job when it’s not creating happiness. They can create the perspective to develop motivation when happiness is lacking. Maybe “fulfillment” is a better goalpost than “happiness”. “Happy” is the experience in the moment, “fulfillment” is the experience in reflection.
I personally don't need a lot of mission; it's nice, and having a mission frame helps me accept an offer, but once I'm in the job, it's kind of whatever.
Autonomy can be picking your tasks from anything possible, or picking your tasks from a small menu, or just doing your assigned tasks in peace. Or having 'flexible' start times of 7-9 AM. Different people have different needs.
I love having global impact, but really all I need is for my code to actually make it out to users. I hate doing a bunch of work and it never ships. But if like one or two people use it, that's enough for me.
Creativity is relative too. Some people want to create totally new things. I just don't want to do the same thing every day for years. In software that's not too hard though; if it's the same every day, it's begging to be automated.
Look for enough of these things to make you happy, not to find the maximum available. And yeah, some jobs won't have enough to meet your needs; they might meet other people's needs though.
More relatable, in my experience, is the dream company. Accepting that you are committed to software development as a career different companies then take the place of a dream job. Google with all their perks of working on site. 37Signals / Basecamp and the remote culture. Fog Creek and “everyone gets an office with a door”.
What I’ve found is that at the end of the day they are still just jobs. It’s the management and the coworkers that make a place great.
I wish I could figure out how to interview for that because it is far more elusive to detect accurately than all the technical interview hoops we all love to complain about.
I've stayed in mediocre jobs because of a great team, and left 'dream' jobs because of people I don't like working with.
> I wish I could figure out how to interview for that [...]
I can get a good vibe in interviews, but it's unreliable, especially remote. As is 'we do drinks at 3pm on Friday'.
I get the learning part - the first time you learn how redundant and simple Cessna engines are, the first time you realize how light and simple it really is, how to tie it down, your first time trying to fly with instruments only, your first crosswind landing, etc. But after that? Really seems like "just a job".
Btw, not a pilot in any sense, just took some very discounted classes.
Pilot salaries at FedEx can range from $108,918 - $377,643
The typical Delta Air Lines Captain salary is $279,152. Captain salaries at Delta Air Lines can range from $97,342 - $443,133
How devastating is that: you dream to be an MD for a decade, you work on it for 5 years, spend thousands of dollars prepping and applying, and you receive ZERO responses from a human voice, just automated email replies? Okay, dream A was quashed, so then what?
I fell into programming for healthcare. I'm not good at it. I struggle to understand basic SQL joins, intermediate R, and intermediate statistics. I can barely solve beginner-level coding interview questions and I never pluck up the motivation to build side-projects, given all the "real life" chores and hobbies distracting me. I lost my last 2 healthcare coding jobs for being too outspoken with my criticisms and opinions. I didn't have the political savvy or grit to swallow my objections and play nice.
I'm still looking for my next position. I want to use SQL, R, and statistics to solve real-world problems in healthcare or climate. This isn't a dream, but it's interesting, it'll pay better than anything else I could do, and I can tell myself I'm lessening suffering and improving human lives. For this next post, I'm going to have to find a place that accepts my openly disagreeable nature, or just swallow it down and say "Yes, Sir" to whatever my bosses demand.
I’m just asking because I’d imagine you’d be able to get into _a_ med school with your academic credentials but maybe not the best one? I’ve also never applied to a med school so I could be talking out my ass.
I didn't apply to the top-tier schools. I knew my GPA would be an algorithmic non-starter, a human wouldn't even look at a GPA under 3.5 in many schools. Also, I'm a white male biological sciences major, not exactly a rare type for medical schools applicants.
Keep in mind, UChicago Bio Sciences had courses I was required to take, that had graduate students and actual medical students in them, that had the median student with an 80 average. How sadistic is that? A classroom full of brilliant students, and half of them will get C's and D's? You can guess which half I was in...
In the end, it may have been a blessing, because MD school is VERY expensive and time-consuming, and I would've been a poor doctor like family medicine or pediatrician, so I'd be financially way worse off and probably a lot more stressed if I had succeeded down that path.
The qualities that you mention in your above post might have made you unhappy as a doctor, even if you had gotten in. I live in a town where you can't swing a cat without hitting a doctor. Most of them strike me as people who would have gotten 4.0 GPA's for the pure enjoyment of it, i.e., competing for a 4.0 was in fact a dream job for them while it lasted. Their kids all have 4.0 GPA's as well. Those who have social lives tend to be older. Many end up switching to part-time status or retiring early. The rich ones all had family money to invest and are not solely dependent on salary income.
Maybe you're just overwhelmed and don't allocate enough time to learn each of those concepted? Joins in particular are a very simple concept that could be understood in a weekend of reading tutorials and playing with them. Honestly, the worst thing about them is probably the naming/syntax confusion across database engines.
BTW regarding studying medicine: here in Poland, in every city with a medical school, I see US students who are getting their M.D. here (they're easy to notice as they congregate in Starbuckses and study there). Many look like they're in their late twenties or in their thirties. Maybe it's a route for you as well?
On the other hand, have friends that grew up in very different homes, where they were pretty much forced to pick medicine, law, or engineering, not ifs or buts. Many ended up switching careers quickly after graduating, pursuing other professions.
In the end, most I know - myself included - ended up doing pretty good. People do adjustments underway, but I'm grateful for having had the chance to chase my teenage dreams, even if it didn't work out as planned.
Then I slowly discovered how awful the graphic design industry is, and made a transition into tech. I taught myself to code at a youngish age so I have no idea why I never considered it as a career.
With hindsight I wish I'd had some pressure from my parents and gone to a "proper" university, studied something like computer science and really applied myself. I visited Cambridge after graduating and was blown away, I didn't even know what an actual university looked like.
In some ways doing what I wanted meant taking the path of least resistance (it's easy to pick the fun route), but ultimately led to disappointment career wise.
Could you please elaborate more on this. Is it the long hours in front of a computer?
>> Then I slowly discovered how awful the graphic design industry is
All in all, the vast majority of my friends switched to FAANG so they could earn good money after years slaving away at agencies. They don't love the work but the pay makes up for it.
I worked for a few independent studios that a lot of design students would think were up there in terms of reputation. We did work for cultural institutions, museums, galleries, architects, artists, fashion brands, etc. The kind of thing you dream of doing as a design student.
The pay at these "cool" studios is generally awful. £25k after 5 years kind of thing. One guy who was at a studio I worked for before me was on £16k. Factoring in the long hours, that works out to well below minimum wage. This is in London, btw. I did get to sit on a chair that cost more than my monthly salary though. I know the directors of these companies make very good money.
Generally they all have a huge list of previous employees. They hire graduates on low salaries because you get to do "cool" work, these are almost exclusively young people with parents that can subsidize their living expenses whilst they start out. They last one to two years, rinse and repeat.The graduate to job ratio is depressing, we used to get tens of applications a day, it's very easy to find replacements.
Unpaid internships are normal, although some pay minimum wage. I had a job throughout university and blew all my savings doing an unpaid three month internship after graduating. It was stupid but also got me a job (on £18k, as a "freelancer" to save the employer money), it's basically impossible to get a foot in the door without working for free for a while. This obviously leads to an industry with very little diversity, most people simply can't afford it.
There is a lot of pandering to artists and curators and talk of "giving shape to contemporary visual culture" that everyone knows is complete bullshit. The art and design world is full of the most egotistical people imaginable, and graphic designers are on the bottom rung generally speaking. We worked with one curator who literally refused to speak to anyone below director level. As in to your face, would just completely blank you, it was bizarre.
The only viable option if you want to have a career is to run your own studio, but again that is very difficult unless you have the money and connections.
In the end I decided it wasn't worth it, I'd rather have a pension and a family one day, it's not worth giving that stuff up to design books or typefaces for artists or curators that don't even know your name.
I still really love design, and I do know a lot of nice people who still do it, but the industry is not great!
I think more important is to not hinge your personal happiness or fulfillment on having a particular job, just like wasting your life waiting to find Mr./Mrs. Right.
Yeah, there's a lot more nuance to this than I give; and I have a family, so that greatly impacts my view and perspective. I think generally the principal holds though - don't link fulfillment to some ideal event you're waiting for.
Caveat emptor, yada yada.
Make your peace with that, and find out how to make the rest of the job make the toil worth it — or at least endurable.
https://www.theonion.com/ant-farm-teaches-children-about-toi...
That looks like a pretty great metric for measuring how close to ideal your job is.
Now I tell people to NOT make passion or hobbies a job, it's a trap.
Work sucks, as a rule, so why not at least do work you sometimes enjoy?
From my observation there are people who do their own thing but don’t get along with people. And there are people who get along with others but don’t have their own goals. The lucky ones are the people who can do both.
That said, I can never tell if people who say they love their job actually love their job or are lying to themselves.