There comes a time in everyone’s life – where the experience accumulated just distills and becomes into simple things. I have realized something like that for me in my job area. After all these years working in a standard compartmentalized working environment – I realized 4 things I look for in a perfect job. Here are those 4 qualities
1. Purpose/Usefulness: It doesn’t have to be eradicating world hunger, but I would like a job which clearly has a purpose or my job fulfills some unmet needs of a customer.
2. Technology/Coolness: I don’t really like COBOL or for that matter work on some old Access to Excel conversion project. I believe today’s problems can’t be solved with yesterday’s technology. It doesn’t really has to be the cutting edge a.k.a “beta” software, but it could be something current and cool. And if you got yesterday’s problem – that’s a whole another story.
3. Flexible: I have come to conclusion that I can’t just work in one location/seat for a long time. I get bored easily with long ass meetings that go nowhere. I find inspiration around me and I have realized that it’s only possible when I pass through various environments. So, one day I would love to work in my beige cubicle, one day it would be in a coffee shop, one day at home in my jammies, one day just out in a park. All it matters is to get the task on that day done. With Skype, wifi and gmail I can be mobile and work across continents.
4. Pays well: I love open source, working towards a goal, helping people etc – but I can’t code on an empty stomach/wallet. I am not that materialistic, but I do value my talents and my skillset. I want to get paid for all the efforts, expertise and skills and get paid well because I work very hard to be different and creative in my work.
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