Do you find your job fulfilling?

I’ll never know everything, but my core skills seem to carrying me through the ever-changing complexities of the web. It’s honestly a great feeling.

A tendency I’ve noticed in myself is becoming discouraged when my job neither recognizes my growing skills, or even has a technical need for them. I’ve got no delusions that I’m some coding legend. I just want to be one…someday.

All that to say, finding satisfaction from a job you dislike is tough, and possibly a road to burnout. Personally, I would rather look for positions that seem technically interesting and have nice people. Companies are usually too invested in their business model than being good for the world.

Do what you can.

I had a ecommerce startup 5 years ago and we couldn't take credit cards, because payment gateways sucked, and the chain of effort around legally doing it was too much for a startup. So 40% of the work was just validating payment, and the other 40% was logistics, which left us very little room to grow.

I think it's satisfying to do B2B stuff so the B2C folk can just focus on being creative and doing what they're good at. I mean as FE I end up doing mostly B2C, but there's a lot of wiring under the hood, and we do things that the competitors have trouble with.

Even when I did e-commerce, it was very satisfying. We sold health ingredients. This stuff was easily accessible in urban places, but we got it into more rural areas. One notable testimonial was a woman whose husband cheated on her because she was fat, and the app helped her take control of that and start eating healthy. But the community ended up a little cult like (people were dieting to the point of passing out), and we realized we created a monster and sold the company.

I think the field doesn't really matter, as much as the company you're working in caring about the people they serve.

It doesn't. Having it be fulfilling is just meaning we ascribe to it.

There's other things that are generally more associated with "being fulfilling" (e.g. having a family, volunteering at a charity, organizing a meetup to help mentor new software engineers). Those are worth trying out if you're looking for fulfillment.

I'm more of a service oriented person too, I did a career shift into management and now starting a job as a Solutions Engineer (similar titled jobs are Solutions Architect, sometimes Sales Engineer, sometimes Customer Success Engineer). Gig is basically going to be directly helping customers solve their problems for a B2B company. That career path might be worth looking into too for you!

Job is a job, you are being paid money in exchange for your time, labour and skills, everything else surrounding it is just BS to make you more productive and happy go lucky robot, therefore increasing someone's bottom line.

Sure a new job might be exciting, but there is a t- after which any individual capable of thought will realize what's going on.

Seek fulfilment elsewhere, maybe take the money you make at a job and put it into something that makes you happy, good luck!

Yes, you absolutely should try to define your life more by what you do when you're NOT working for someone else, but the reality is our work life takes the majority of our productive energy. If you're feeling dead inside because you're putting all your energy into something you don't believe in, you should start applying for companies you can really see yourself feeling proud to be a part of. That said, the industry isn't the only factor, i would say even more important is the company culture and the people you work with (further supporting the arguments of the commenters in fintech and adtech). I have worked at a company in renewables that had a terrible culture that forced me to move on, even though i loved what we were providing.

At the end of the day, whatever it takes for you to feel satisfied with the work you've done is no less than you should settle for. I wish you the best in your quest for happiness.

Well, yes.

I'm a science dude and I work days in a laboratory with the 24/7 people and instruments to keep them operating most reliably and profitably while continuously improving the fulfillment of clients' needs.

Even though it's somewhat toxic with the chemicals and I often work a 12 hour day.

I'm on my feet almost all days anyway, wearing the lab coat like everyone else.

It's a lot of responsibility, been doing it for decades as an employee, entrepreneur, and now employee again before I retire from the employer and be a trainer and consultant.

Will still be wearing the lab coat a lot while visiting other companies' labs too.

That's what it takes, that's what I do.

Could go full remote and just interpret readings as a service, but nah.

You want to make a Venn diagram of all the activities that you're driven to do, all the activities you can get paid for, and all the activities you're exceptionally talented at. The intersection is where you'll find the most joy. Look up Richard Shell at Wharton. He has a bunch of material about this very topic.

Best of luck!

Given that you enjoy helping others and helping people grow, have you considered a management position? I've been very lucky to have good managers who care about their reports and want to help them. That sort of attitude in a manager is really valuable.

For example my fulfilment relies on the fulfilment of the needs of the family material, emotional and prosperity. To make that happen i choose a job that i will love the best and help me fulfil my needs. Does this work ? Yes it does. Surely does.

I did CS diploma, post diploma, engineering, overall 8 years of academics. After that i am working in the IT industry for past 16 years. I never regretted my job. Before marriage, i was supporting my parents, friends with what i earned. After marriage i also started supporting spouse, kids, in-laws. And they all are supporting me as well. At job i do things for my peers, my product manager, my manager. They in-turn support me. Technically we created solutions that last time by design, that make people / customers happy.

But none of this stem from how much money our product made, or how much impact we created inside the product. We sure created impact in and around the product. Not just the product but the people who used it / built it. Always work for your goals or goals of someone (a person) not a product. Work for a vision, yours or someone else's and do it sincerely. I always loved what i did, not because it was easy ot we made money, but because it made someone happy.

I work for a Healthcare company (not insurance). I don't find my job satisfying or meaningful. But I feel like what I do in my job is useful to users and stakeholders. My management layer does a good job of pushing back on pointless work.

To look at this more broadly, I've worked in a bunch of different industries in consulting roles. Oil & Gas, Consumer Goods (e.g. laundry detergent),Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Medical Devices etc.

Arguably the most morally questionable of those was Oil & Gas. However, the most and least satisfying work I did was in Oil & Gas. When the project was useful to the users and stakeholders, I felt motivated and useful. When the projects were pointless and the users didn't care I felt useless and felt like every day was a waste of my life. The whole "Oil and Gas Industry is Evil" was always there in the air, but it never really changed my sense of fulfillment or meaning in my work.

I imagine every industry is the same way. Let's take a social media company. Some people are optimizing ads to better target new parents who feel lost and unsure. Some people are optimizing the data centers to reduce power consumption. I imagine some people would find a job doing the latter useful and a job doing the former as not only not useful, but harmful.

I don't think I can find fulfillment or meaning in any job. But I can chose a job where I feel like what I'm doing in useful, even if it's only useful in the tiny microcosm of the context of my job.

> My theory is if I worked in a different business then I might feel that I am positively contributing to the world rather than just helping sell something.

Meh, you say that. I worked on an open source project that did a lot of public good but it just caused me to burn out even faster. Back then I was dating for example and going on dates ate a lot of my time and energy and having a job that I felt morally obliged to do got in the way of me feeling good about spending that time and energy advancing my own personal goals (I wanted to get married and have kids). I left that job and took a boring corporate job where I didn't mind slacking and met my partner within a year lmao. It was 1000% worth it to make that trade. Being overly invested in your work just makes you more exploitable. You'll work your butt off on some open source library and make below market salary while people will work less hard making use of your code and make a lot more money than you.

In the end, boring commerce related stuff is what gets me paid. I approach it as: if I'm working harder than I need to in order to not get fired I'm working too hard. Some people will call this cynical or whatever, but to heck with that. Our whole economy is a race to the bottom in terms of price/performance so why would I not behave accordingly?

It might sound like whining but I also love the fact that spending my teenage years and early 20's obsessed with all things computer science set me up to make a very good living with relatively low stress. It's boring and unfulfilling but oh well. We're all smart people here, we can figure out ways to survive and feel good despite the fact that the economy disproportionately rewards things that suck to do.