In My Experience... | Career Control is the key. (1408)

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Career Control is the key.
[ Posted by Dan on February 07, 2003 | 5 Comments ]

C|Net reports on worker dissatisfaction...

The study said that one of the reasons workers are so grumpy is because managers wrongly interpret why employees are so disgruntled. Some of the major reasons that workers cite for their unhappiness are: amount of workload, a lack of a chance for professional development, boring job tasks and insufficient recognition.

Meanwhile, managers mistakenly believe that employees' feelings about management and the future of the company were more important to job satisfaction than workers' personal goals. In fact, the opposite is true. The study also found that managers underestimate the importance of many factors contributing to workplace satisfaction, including career development opportunities, rewards, challenging tasks, and a sense of self-confidence.

When management hands down edicts that directly contradict the business model of the company and are obviously tailored to self preservation, at the expense of doing good work, I get pissed.

It's institutionalized. Companies create systems where by people get promoted based on how many people they manage, or by being connected to the right projects at the right time. That creates a system whereby individuals seek out the situations that will benefit them the best (we are after all, human) at the expense of others. Human nature gets leveraged by corporate ignorance of the real work being done by the coal shovelers, and this creates fear and loathing when you have no control over the process. The article cited mentions "self-confidence" as a factor, but for me, it's career control. I want to feel like the work I am doing is better preparing me for what is next in my career.

I think the biggest thing that contributes to my dissatisfaction at work is some of the decisions that upper management makes. We can tell them one thing, and they'll go and do the exact opposite. Oh so very frustrating.

-Posted by milbertus on February 7, 2003 05:54 PM

Hmm... boredom, check, amount of work(too little), check... professional development... eh, I like being a coder. I suppose it's like being a carpenter. It's just what you are. You hone your skills, you become a master carpenter, your work is better and worth more.... it's not like climbing the corporate ladder. I don't want promotion into management, just more money. And more toys. And more to do so I don't sit there reading weblogs all day. :-)

-Posted by jc on February 7, 2003 06:36 PM

Yeah, I wanna build stuff too, but I haven't figured out how to work on applescripts, and perl stuff (the easier the better), and blogging and UIs and Illustrator without having the management 'over head' (sweet double meaning there).

In terms of workload, I'm packed to the gills, and new stuff seems to come in all the time, and the range of stuff to do (html coding, javascript coding, architecture diagramming, telling other people in other departments how to order their processes, develop requirements, ignore requirements, data entry, etc.)

-Posted by Dan on February 7, 2003 06:58 PM

I'm not grumpy, but I am somewhat dissatisfied. My problem is that I am so non-challenged at work, in complexity and amount of work. I try to offset this by working on challenging stuff on my own, but that makes the work stuff seem even more drab. However, everything else about the job is great, meaning the people i work with, pay, location, schedule, etc, so I'm currently in the cliche stage of "figuring out what's important", or hoping that things get more interesting at work...

-Posted by Eric on February 8, 2003 12:25 AM

That's true, I had forgotten about that - I don't want a promotion. I enjoy writing code at work, and any promotion that I would get (at my current job, anyway) would cause me to write less code. So really, I have no incentive whatsoever to strive for a promotion in my current position. I'm not sure if that's good, bad, or what.

-Posted by milbertus on February 8, 2003 09:45 AM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).