Another thread got me wondering this. I go to work, do my job, avoid drama go home, do the same thing the next day day and get paid every two weeks. I make enough to be comfortable and I have decent benefits. Simple, no problems, I’m perfectly content. The work is moderate/low skill blue collar and not particularly challenging, offers no prestige - but I like it, the time just flies by.
I have little interest in moving into management; I could pretty much do the same thing, same low level job for the next 25 years and be perfectly happy.
The thing is, it seems to me that I can’t think of anyone who has this attitude, most of my coworkers complain, always want more - more money, more status, more appreciation. And my friends - almost all of them have very professional jobs (I have no idea why they bother hanging out with me), seem even less content with their jobs most of the time. So, is general dissatisfaction pretty much the norm no matter what one does for a living?
I’m a Millennial but I feel much the same way. I could stay at my company for 40 years. But I do think I would want a promotion every 5-7 years or so at least.
I could be way off here, but my impression is that your attitude tends to be more common in Europe - work doesn’t dominate your life, it’s a way to make a living, and you go home and enjoy yourself afterwards. The “you are your job” concept is a more American thing.
I’m sort of in the middle on this. I aspire to have INTERESTING work, but I’m not ambitious in the conventional sense of the word. Management? No effin’ way. But I definitely change jobs in the pursuit of fulfilling work.
This keeps me in a kind of perpetual “new guy” mindset. Although some seniority would be nice at times, I like that I’m kept humble and learning. The last time I had a job lasting more than five years it turned me into a person I didn’t want to be.
Same here. 22 years in the ‘same’ job. But it’s IT so things have changed dramatically in that time.
I sort of supervise/mentor, but don’t have to do any evaluations or anything. Been there at previous employment. It sucked. My ‘manager’ makes a little more than me. Same age. My co-workers want me to take his job if he leaves. No way.
I’m finishing grad school (yes, still). I’d freely admit (in any forum where it wouldn’t hurt my chances of getting a job) that all I want from my career is stability, enough money to comfortably raise my family, and enough time to be a father to my kids. I don’t care about recognition or responsibility or intangible rewards or any of that. As has been said, I want to work to live, not live to work.
A while back, I was googling potential employers, and found an anecdote from someone who interviewed at one place I had found. The first question that was fired at him in the interview was “Do you want to work 55 hours a week?” Taken a bit aback, he said, “well, I can certainly manage to do that at times if the work requires…” “NO! Do you WANT to work 55 hours a week?!” “Uh…not particularly…” They showed him the door soon after. That kind of workplace is my personal vision of hell.
Of course, I say that, but I’m typing this from the microscope room in my lab at 10 pm on a Saturday night, while my family is 3,000 miles away visiting family so I can work without distraction for a couple of months. Turns out it really IS hell.
I like my work because it lets me do cool stuff in my field. I’m a compulsive programmer, and I get paid for it - and I pretty much make up much of my own stuff to do. The system I’m working on now I architected myself and build 80% of it myself. And it gets used, which is even more fun.
I enjoyed managing a fairly small group, or a larger group where half of it had a well respected leader. That way I could stay technical. I’d rather have no reports than 16. And I was an acting second level manager, which involved spending most of your time with budgets, meeting, and politics. That I backed away from real fast.
But I enjoy my field so much that I’m going to stay active in conferences after I retire. And I hope I keep getting invited onto panels where I can say what I really think.
I’m like the TS. I actually took a demotion and went to night shift to go back to the low stress, decent enough money job that didn’t take all my time or leave me pulling my hair out.
I’m content with my job, but I don’t have any illusions about this contentment lasting forever. Because things change all the time. Bosses change. Good coworkers get swapped out for bad ones. Tasks that used to be fun and challenging grow stale and tiring.
So I don’t want to ever wake up one day and absolutely hate my job. To prevent this from happening, I am willing to work a little extra every day so that I can mix chores with “fun stuff.” The “fun stuff” keeps me sharp and marketable just in case I’ve got to bail. I don’t take anything for granted.
I don’t think I’m ambitious. I don’t envy management and don’t aspire to be in their position. But I don’t want to be low man on the totem pole either. I don’t want to always be the one who gets the shitty assignments, nor do I want to be left out important decision-making because people perceive me to be disinterested.
The correct answer to this is, “Yes I do. It would be terrific to work in a job so satisfying for an organization so dynamic that I thought it was worth investing half of my waking hours each week. Is this such a job and are you such a company?”
My work mantra over the last few years has been “I get paid by the hour.” Occasionally varied with “I just work here” or “Not my problem” or “yeah, that’s above my pay grade to worry about.” I’m a legal secretary, and I’m good at my job. But some days (or weeks) I just have to shrug my shoulders and say “I don’t care.” (Usually about some petty bullshit thing - oh noes, they need to switch desks between me and a co-worker in order to add another desk! The sky is falling! Oh wait, not it’s not. I get paid by the hour.)
It’s actually a pretty common attitude… thank God!
No, seriously. If everybody wanted to be president of Coca-Cola, then every person in the world except one would be extremely frustrated. Lots of people want to be storekeepers, or accountants, or mechanics, or doctors, or… any other of millions of jobs which don’t require being promoted into. They may need a lot of work to get them in the first place (see: medical school), but there’s few promotions you can get without totally changing tracks. And despite what we’re told about how we should all be ambitious and want promotions, it is actually a good thing, since the world happens to need more mechanics than maintenance managers.
There is a second aspect, what we call deformación profesional in Spanish (“professional deformity [of the mind]”): if you’re a gardener, when you see a garden you’re going to analyze it more professionally than someone who can’t even grow a potted geranium. But that’s not because you set out to analyze that garden professionally: it’s because all those hours spent thinking plants make the process automatic. This is very common, but I do run into people who don’t have it (see: my SiL who would never recommend homeopatics to her patients but gives them to her children).
I once joined a company where our incoming process included a speech where one of the partners told us that if we worked hard enough and did things right, “you can even make partner”. I asked “what would that entail?” “Sorry?” “What is expected of a partner in this particular company? I can’t decide if I want to make partner without knowing what would be expected of one.”
same here. I like what I do. I’m an engineer, and the next step up for me is management. If I got promoted, I’d no longer be doing any engineering work and would instead be doing nothing but bullshit. No thanks. This notion that everyone has to be a wannabe Big Swingin’ Dick has to die.
There are some industries out there which are so competitive in general that if you’re not competitive/ambitious/whatever, you don’t matter in that you’re easily replaceable. Maybe some people simply don’t care about that. However, if you’ve put X years in, it’s expected that you will maintain that competitive/ambitious/whatever edge until you either leave or die. There’s a whole generation :cough: who had that drummed into them, so this whole laissez-fair attitude is simply not acknowledged.
I have a bad case of this. Trust me, unless you want the unvarnished truth, don’t ask me to analyze anything to do with baking. I’ve seen baking blogs out there which shouldn’t exist because their information within is plain WRONG. I have to keep chanting to myself the whole “I’m a professional…this is for HOME bakers” thing or else I’ll lose my mind. BTW, it’s the reason why I seldom read baking, or any kind of food blog, nowadays.
I’d be content with the job I currently have except it doesn’t pay enough to live on. That is the ONLY reason I’m seeking advancement. If it paid enough for a comfortable living I’d stay put. And by “comfortable” I mean “no longer need food stamps and can afford to purchase new tires for the truck without going into debt”. It’s a pretty low bar.
Unfortunately, the only way to go up, really, is management. So guess what I’m in training for…?
My work situation is a little bit different. I’m technically an independent contractor but I only work with one company and have office duties there as well as the other work I contract for. There’s no promotion to be had until the owner retires and sells the place to me, but that’s what I’m gunning for. I’d also like to do less of one part of my job and more in other areas, which would bring more money in as well as being more enjoyable and interesting for me. I have grand plans to become recognized in my field, which doesn’t count as a promotion but I do strive towards more challenging work and more of it.
I’m also personally invested in my work, and couldn’t have an “on the clock” and “off the clock” attitude even if I wanted to. I DO set aside time where work gets put away, but if a client or coworker calls with an emergency during that time, I’m responding. I’ve answered calls and put out fires while on vacation thousands of miles away, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a movie, during family dinners, etc. and while it can get annoying at times, I accept it as part of the job. I love what I do so much that I’ll take those irritations in order to keep the awesome bits.
Not to hijack, but what are some of the most common WRONG things you see re: baking?
I am very much like the OP; I have a good job and good benefits, and am not ambitious when it comes to “self promotion.” I do not have a desire to climb the ladder and be a big-time manager. I genuinely enjoy the work I do, and I get satisfaction from solving problems and building things.
Some of my coworkers are not like me, though. I work with a bunch of engineers, and it is plainly obviously many of them have absolutely no interest in engineering. They only went to engineering school because they heard the pay and job security were good. Not surprisingly, they hate working in the lab. They seem to spend all their time traveling, going to meetings & conferences, doing “busy work,” playing golf, hobnobbing with upper management, and in general trying to “look good” without doing any meaningful work. I fully expect I will be working for these assholes in the near future after they’re promoted. (In fact, it has already happened with one individual.)
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