Work satisfaction

February 3rd, 2006

Hello there. How are you? I remember this place.. (Blows dust from keyboard). My my, this seat feels a little creakier than I remember. Perhaps it needs a little oil on the springs. Let’s see if I can remember what the buttons do…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about job satisfaction. It’s a complicated thing, you know. There’s a lot of things that need to be set up for it to happen, and a lot of things that can knock it over like a fragile house made of defective lego that doesn’t have the nobbly bits on top of the bricks.

I haven’t had many jobs. Three real jobs in my professional career, in fact. Each of them fails to deliver full job satisfaction for different reasons.

The first one had enormous potential. It was great because

- I got to work with video editing equipment, which was quite cool.
- I had pretty much full control over the work that I did.
- My boss would go away for long periods of time.
- He hid pornographic tapes of his wife in plain view and in the office whilst expecting me to stick to the same tape of Status Quo playing at some festival every single day. Hide it in the bedroom, for fucks sake.

Unfortunately it sucked because

- I got paid £9k a year.
- It was always really cold.
- Only retired people buy amateur video editing equipment, and I had to explain how to use Windows to pensioners over the phone on a regular basis. It was painful.

It was my first job though, so my view of job satisfaction was still pretty much undefined. I just thought it was cool to have money.

Job number two was the longest lasting of the three (So far). It was cool because

- I got proper money.
- I didn’t have any contact with customers whatsoever.
- We went to the pub a lot.
- People had a laugh quite a lot.
- We got free cakes.

It sucked because

- I always felt like I could be made redundant at any moment.
- I had absolutely no idea how the end product was going to be used by the customer because I never really understood the problem we were solving.
- The end product was so far down the food-chain that it was entirely intangible, and therefore impossible to explain your impact on the world to someone who asked what you did.
- The truth is, I really had no impact on the world whatsoever.
- Free cakes are slightly condescending, if you stop and think about it.

Job number three (My current job) has its own set of pros and cons. In it’s favour are…

- We get to work on really cool products that make people say ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaah’.
- I can (theoretically) walk into a shop and see something I’ve worked on sitting on a shelf.
- I’ve developed a new-found interest in the design and architecture of products which I’d previously assumed I was crap at. It turned out that I just needed to actually care about the product.
- I get even more proper money.
- I get free curry and periodically, a free mug.

On the down-side of things

- Most of the cool products get canned with such alarming regularity that I often have no idea what I’m meant to be working on from day to day.
- The hierarchy is so confusing, that I’m not entirely sure who’s in charge most of the time.
- Things are so appallingly political that I’ve been known to work on products to compete with other development teams internal to the company.
- I have no sense that what I’m doing will see the light of day.
- I have to wash my own dishes. I hate that.
- In over a year, I’ve been to the pub with workmates only once.
- Free curry and mugs is slightly condescending, if you stop and think about it.

So if someone wants to offer me a job, here are my specifications…

- I want to work on cool things that are tangible and easily explainable to friends and family.
- I want to be paid handsomly.
- There needs to be a dishwasher in the office.
- I want a say in how the product is designed.
- I want experts in charge who know what the customer wants before we start building it.
- The office must be near a pub. Preferably one that plays good music.
- I want to be left alone to get on with it, most of the time.
- Good air conditioning.
- A clear hierarchy, but with genuinely approachable staff at all levels.
- Zero customer contact.
- If you’re going to give me free things to keep me happy - pornographic videos of your wives should be one of them.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, am I?

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