Poll--What are the two things you desire most from a job?

[sparkytheop]

Yeah, only two...

[HPstache]

How about a choice for "The work I do is something I love or am passionate about".  That would be in my top 2 for sure.

[sparkytheop]

How about a choice for "The work I do is something I love or am passionate about".  That would be in my top 2 for sure.

I'll add that.  I was thinking "value", but "passionate" is different, huh?

[JLee]

Only two? I wasn't even halfway down the list and I picked four. :P

[partdopy]

Regular lurker, first time poster.

Only thing I desire from a job is liking the people I work with.  Didn't see that on your list, but if I'm going to spend 8 hours a day somewhere I need to like the people.

[JLee]

Regular lurker, first time poster.

Only thing I desire from a job is liking the people I work with.  Didn't see that on your list, but if I'm going to spend 8 hours a day somewhere I need to like the people.

5th one down - coworkers/work environment.

[Eric222]

I picked money - but not because I want to FIRE early.  Money allows you to buy lots of different types of freedom. 

...really, I just want to be FI.  At this point, I'd still do the same job - I'd just be less stressed about it. 

Of course, my second choice was having a job I'm passionate about...

[KMMK]

Well, I do really love clicking things, but with top two I had to go with climate control - I HATE working outdoors. Probably something to do with where I live and jobs I've had. Try collecting urine outside at -30C with a foot of snow with a dog 8 inches off the ground. I was SOOO happy to land my office job. I will not give that up.

Then feeling valuable. It's why I started my own business. I wasn't feeling valuable at the corporation anymore.

[SingleMomDebt]

Purpose and cool coworkers. The latter I've been surrounded with for over a decade. Feel very fortunate.

[Raenia]

For me the coworkers/work environment is the absolute most important factor - really, the boss is the most important, but I'd file that under work environment too.  Between two jobs with similar supervisory styles and environments, I go next to compensation.  Benefits are part of that, but I selected money as more encompassing.  I'd take a job with worse/no benefits if the salary compensated appropriately.

[Bateaux]

I'm lazy.  Least effort.

[golden1]

I just accepted a job offer from a company that ticks seven or eight of those boxes as an improvement over my current position.  Better pay by 15%, better commute (same distance but less traffic), working with people more in teams (my current job is too isolating for my tastes), better benefits.  I don't know about the people yet obviously, but they seem nice so far.  I feel I will be more valuable in this next job than in my current one. 

[big_slacker]

WFH/flex schedule is #1 for me. I will not go sit in a box the same time every day which is decided by someone else. Meaningful challenging work and good team members come before money relatively. I'm not gonna make under market, but as long as pay is market rate the other things matter more.

[Zikoris]

I went for "climate control" and "lazy", having done both outdoor work in the rain, and really hard stuff. "good schedule" would be number three from the list. But honesty, the #1 thing I look for in a job is it being low stress, somewhat interesting so my workdays go by quickly, and having reasonably pleasant coworkers/management. I'm just looking to chill until I retire, basically.

[mwulff]

I went with valuable and talking to people. The money is nice but no matter what job I take in my line of business then I will be paid well enough. The talking to people/in front of a crowd, that's just the way I am wired I guess.

[Dee18]

Intellectual challenge (otherwise known as never getting bored)

[specialkayme]

Having worked in jobs where I go home feeling like pond scum, job values are most important to me. I end up enjoying my time off more. I can actually spend time with the family, and not be sulky or depressed thinking about how I screwed someone over at work a few hours ago.

Apart from that, I'm surprised many on here are choosing money over benefits. From my experience, companies that offer better benefits are more invested into the long term growth of the employees. Typically they have a better work/life balance, better retention rate, happier employees that are more cohesive, ect. Its easy for a company to offer more money, and often if they have really shitty work/life balance, stress, horrible work environment they need to offer more money to keep/attract employees. In my own life, any time I've taken a job solely based on the money, I've been disappointed and dissatisfied.

But ultimately, it's all a spectrum.

[Fish Sweet]

I feel almost anti-Mustachian saying this, but I picked coworkers and feeling valued at my job.  Money, benefits, a shorter commute, those are all hugely important too, but I wouldn't take a high paying job with a two minute commute and great benefits if I had nightmare coworkers and felt degraded and totally worthless every day (things that have happened to people I know who got stuck in toxic work circumstances.)  Spending your time at home stressing about the next work day, feeling filled with dread or crying on your way to work... that's a quick way to ruin your mental and physical health and leave a person making short-sighted poor decisions.  Maybe I'll work a few more years as a result, but they won't be miserable years.

[sol]

There is a vast body of literature discussing job satisfaction in America, from both an employee-retention perspective for businesses trying to keep good people, to the psychologist's perspective of understanding individual motivations.

Pretty uniformly, the job satisfaction of American comes down to three main factors:

1.  Autonomy.  The ability control your day to day activities for yourself.

2.  Recognition.  Receiving positive feedback (usuallly respect/admiration) from your employer, your coworkers, and others.

3.  Achievement.  The sense that you are accomplishing something worthwhile in your job.

Notice what's not explicitly in this list:  the paycheck, the vacation days, the health benefits, the company swag, or any of the other primary tools that employers typically use to try to motivate people to work hard and keep morale up. 

Also not on the list, interestingly, is any form of "easy".  People aren't usually happy with jobs that are undemanding, because they are unfulfilling.  We WANT to feel challenged in life.  We want to be enthusiastic about our work, like we want to be enthusiastic about the rest of our lives, even when that enthusiasm consumes our attention span and eats into free time.  The best job in the world is one that you are dying to get up and go to, every day, even on weekends and holidays, because you really love it that much.

[nouveauRiche]

WFH
Flexible (set my schedule)
Part time

[EnjoyIt]

There is a vast body of literature discussing job satisfaction in America, from both an employee-retention perspective for businesses trying to keep good people, to the psychologist's perspective of understanding individual motivations.

Pretty uniformly, the job satisfaction of American comes down to three main factors:

1.  Autonomy.  The ability control your day to day activities for yourself.

2.  Recognition.  Receiving positive feedback (usuallly respect/admiration) from your employer, your coworkers, and others.

3.  Achievement.  The sense that you are accomplishing something worthwhile in your job.

Notice what's not explicitly in this list:  the paycheck, the vacation days, the health benefits, the company swag, or any of the other primary tools that employers typically use to try to motivate people to work hard and keep morale up. 

Also not on the list, interestingly, is any form of "easy".  People aren't usually happy with jobs that are undemanding, because they are unfulfilling.  We WANT to feel challenged in life.  We want to be enthusiastic about our work, like we want to be enthusiastic about the rest of our lives, even when that enthusiasm consumes our attention span and eats into free time.  The best job in the world is one that you are dying to get up and go to, every day, even on weekends and holidays, because you really love it that much.

Right on.  Pay a fair wage for the work provided and remove money from the equation.  Then set an environment where people feel like they add real value and respected for it.

[khangaroo]

One of my MBA colleague had a great saying from Mongolia that stuck with me:

In your 20's, you should work for someone else. In your 30's, you should work for yourself. And in your 40's and beyond, you should work for the youth and future generation.

Your age range might differ but I think the overall message is great because as you start to get a firm footing of who you are and gain that knowledge, experience, and financial footing you can start dispersing those to the next generation.

My range is probably more towards the 50's before I start to fully commit to helping the future generation.

[Tiger Stache]

So many choices!

[Johnez]

There is a vast body of literature discussing job satisfaction in America, from both an employee-retention perspective for businesses trying to keep good people, to the psychologist's perspective of understanding individual motivations.

Pretty uniformly, the job satisfaction of American comes down to three main factors:

1.  Autonomy.  The ability control your day to day activities for yourself.

2.  Recognition.  Receiving positive feedback (usuallly respect/admiration) from your employer, your coworkers, and others.

3.  Achievement.  The sense that you are accomplishing something worthwhile in your job.

Notice what's not explicitly in this list:  the paycheck, the vacation days, the health benefits, the company swag, or any of the other primary tools that employers typically use to try to motivate people to work hard and keep morale up. 

This. But if stuff like vacation days, health benefits, or vacation are withheld-its a sign the employer doesn't care too much about the employee.

Autonomy is pretty important. It can be screwed up so easily in so many ways. "OK, the engineers have figured out This New System is going to be 0.001% more efficient so we are going to switch the entire operation over to this system starting next week." I've seen it blow up a few times already. I don't know what management is thinking, but if they invested a bit of time trying to get "buy in" from the guys on the floor, we'd probably be able to offer suggestions and even make the new system work.

[bryan995]

Where is the choice for learning new things / technology?

The second I stop actively learning new things in my job is the same second I begin looking for a new job. You can't beat being paid to improve your resume :)

[Eludia]

I feel I should be able to click Money twice.  That's literally the only reason I do it.  (I am a consultant and only get compensated my rate so it is all I want and all I get.

[mr_orange]

When I was younger I would have selected the money item, but the money isn't as important to me any more with a family.  I selected flexibility so I can run my side businesses and invest more time there.  I also selected passion since my current role is pretty blah.  It's tough to really have it all though.

I get all the autonomy, mastery, and purpose from running and growing my own businesses so there is no need for an employer to do it for me now. 

[golfreak12]

I valued 3 things right now.
1) Flexibility.
2) Money
3) Stressed free environment.

My job has all 3. Except you don't have #3 as an option.
- I can take off any time I want.
- I make plenty of money for what I do.
- The work is a little bit demanding but its stressed-free.

[sol]

After spending all of the time in school (one more academic year to go!) I really want my next job to be one where I'm being paid to do research.

Sure, but WHY is that attractive to you?   It's probably not solely because it's the goal you've been working towards for arbitrary reasons and you want to see the goal fulfilled, is it?

I was in your shoes, once upon a time.  I didn't want a paid research job for it's own sake, I wanted to work on interesting problems with interesting people, to be intellectually stimulated by the process of research, and to achieve some modicum of financial stability so that I wouldn't have to live in roach-infested apartments in my 30s like I had to in my 20s.  I wanted improved living conditions, sure, but there were lots of ways to achieve that goal outside of research.

[Blindsquirrel]

  I am disappointed that inventory taker for a blind liquor store owner with a beautiful daughter did not make this list. People say I have no ambition, sheez, I will keep looking.