I’m Quitting My Job
I’m quitting my job.
Why?
I want to do work that I can feel good about.
Growing up and even through most of my 20s, it never really occurred to me to think of how I feel about my own work. Like most people I thought the only output of the work that mattered was the amount of money it produced. If it can meet your needs and desires, that’s good enough.
However I now realize that what ultimately matters is what you think of your own work. Not of the by-product (money) but what you actually think of the performance and result of your work. If you can get to a place where you feel good about the work you are doing, where the performance is joyful and the result/output of the work is good or great in your opinion, that is ultimately more rewarding and will lead to a better life. And if you keep improving by objectively taking feedback, you eventually will be rewarded with good money.
Work I Don’t Feel Good About
Operations (my current role)
In the years after my graduation in 2011, I’ve mainly worked in Operations. Operations is something I never really understood before working in it, and I realize most people who haven’t worked in Operations(and some people in it) don’t really understand what it is.
At a low level, Operations is mainly supporting the business through tasks that don’t align with any other department or discipline (Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Finance, etc..). Think of a Starbucks barista, except instead of taking orders and making coffee you are usually answering emails and phone calls and clicking buttons on a computer.
At a mid level, Operations is overseeing those tasks and problem solving any unexpected or difficult situations that arise, as well as collaborating with other disciplines to explain how things work. At a higher level, Operations is improving those tasks that the business relies on in a way that benefits the business and/or the customer.
While I happened to land in Operations after graduating, I don’t have any desire to stay with it, nor did I ever have any plan to. Mainly because it doesn’t allow for any creative or analytical work, at least not at the mid-lower levels. And therefore it isn’t work that I enjoy doing or that I can look back on and feel good about.
Investing
My initial career goal was to get into investement research, then gradually make my way to trading, so that I could effectively manage an investment portfolio. However, this is no longer a goal of mine. With investing the positive outcomes are (to put it simply) either you make money or a client makes money or both. These are good outcomes, it’s just that nothing truly changes in the real economy of goods and services.
And since the only output of investing is profits, it’s tough to feel truly good about the work. Sure, you(possibly) made money, but what do you truly have to look back on and feel good about? Numbers on a screen?
Work I Do Feel Good About
Business
Producing a good or service that other people will happily pay for is something that I can truly feel good about. Owning the business that produces the good or service is obviously ideal since you get to keep some of the profit.
However finding the right business to start can be tough. I find that the only businesses that I can start are businesses that solve a problem I have or fill a need/desire that I have.
In Ernest Becker’s ‘The Denial of Death’ he argues that creation is essential to living a life worth living:
Either you eat up yourself and others around you trying for perfection, or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some type of objective creativity is the only answer man has to life.
For me, building a business that solves a problem I have or fills a desire/need I developed allows for an objective creativity that makes life much more exciting and fulfilling.
While there’s less of a creative aspect to buying into a business (as opposed to starting one), if I think there’s value that I can add I would buy into one, since growing a business is something I would enjoy doing and looking back on, and because there’s less risk.
Software Engineering
I started learning how to code several years ago on my own, and found it really challenging. However, my curiosity around coding never went away. In 2017 I decided to build a web application and so I continued to teach myself to code. I outsourced work to contractors who also served as a mentors to help build out my idea.
Much like business, software engineering is a means of creation. Seeing an idea or a feature come to life through code gets me excited. Solving bugs and improving code engages my analytical side and also gets me excited since it ensure the robustness and longevity of the software that I’m working on. It also feels great to look back on what I’ve built or contributed to.
Since software plays an increasingly important part in our everyday lives, it is definetly work that I can look back and feel good about. Even if my own projects fail, the skills I pick up will always be transferrable to other companies or projects.
Conclusion
I’m quitting my job to do work that I can feel good about. I find that I don’t feel good about Operations and Investing roles, and that I do feel good about buisness building as well as software engineering. So I will invest time and money into my two current side projects (SnackDial and TripTippa) to see if I can turn them into businesses, and potentially transition to a software engineering role later on.
