On Satisfaction at Work

It feels great to be promoted — no doubt about it. A higher salary, respect from your peers, getting to be called ‘Boss’, and a lot more. However, there’s one thing I don’t like about getting promoted, and no, it isn’t the money.

As one goes up the corporate ladder (as far as being a software developer is concerned), bigger responsibilities abound. You get to become a group leader, then a project leader, then a supervisor — the number of people below your rank becomes larger. You get to control how a project goes about at a larger scale. This isn’t really a problem for me, as these would pose greater challenges, and I love to be in situations where my abilities get to be challenged. Yet, in the challenges that abound, your managers expect you to give up one thing or another, and this is where the problem starts for me.

Being a junior engineering supervisor requires me to supervise technical aspects of the project — how things are ‘built’, in laymen’s terms. It also requires me to monitor my subordinates and make sure that everything goes ‘as planned’. However, it also requires me to take a lesser role on being a ‘developer’. My superiors expect that I handle a lesser module and concentrate on making sure that others do their job.

This is where the problem starts. I went to this field because I love solving problems — technical problems. I also love tinkering with details — how values are calculated, how to produce an output in the most efficient way possible. I also love doing these BY MYSELF. It’s not that I don’t trust other people’s work, but it’s what I love doing. Letting other people do what I love doing makes me feel a bit bored.

I have one criteria on telling when I should consider a career move — I know I’m happy with my work when I think of it as just play. Once the ‘play’ factor of work goes away, and boredom sets in, that’s when I know I’m not happy anymore, and that’s when I ought to look into other places.

A close co-employee just spent his last day of work for our company last friday, and I remember telling him, ‘It’s not a matter of whether you will resign or not — it’s just a question of when and why’.

Could that question of ‘when’ and ‘why’ be answered sometime in the near future for me?