Great Career
- Transfer
Good day, habralyudi!
Like many, I have been working in IT for quite some time and some time ago I reached the state of “how did it all go bad.” From this state a desire arose to change not just work, but the field of activity in general. After a couple of attempts, I came to the conclusion (fairly obvious) that it is more profitable to stay, especially in a crisis.
The next step was the question of how to make sure that the work did not cause disgust, but ideally liked it. Since over time absolutely everything becomes boring, then to make it so like some conscious effort. The main problem with this is that it is not known for certain how to do this. A lot of different solutions are proposed, but what I saw did not make much impression on me, for various reasons. And the other day I came across an interesting article, a free translation of which I bring to your attention. Although this article discusses the approach to building a career in general, I think that in each specific job you can find something to improve using this approach.
Actually the article ...
The Great Career
Laura loves what she does. For many people, including me (and I have known her for the last 5 years), she represents the platonic ideal of
Laura’s great career - database genius. Companies hire her to comb their most hardened data into elegant structures. If you are lucky enough to hire her, she will assemble a team of selected programmers and will live in your office for up to six months. Then she will take your generous check and fly away to her charming house near Boston to find new ways to spend money.
She can skip months between projects - the payment is high enough to allow as much vacation as she wants. She takes advantage of this time to, among other things, obtain a pilot’s license, learn diving, and travel around Asia.
Introspection principle
Among the writers of the books “How to Make a Career”, the principle of introspection is very popular, which in brief is to evaluate your inclinations and desires, and somehow make it so that you can earn a living using them. Often this approach is characterized as a "source of satisfaction and great success." Also, this principle is often extended beyond career building, using it to set goals in life in general.
The principle of introspection is so ingrained that it is often forgotten that this is the same hypothesis as everyone else and, like all others, requires verification.
My question is very simple: when we look at people like Laura who love what they do, does their happiness explain the self-analytic coincidence between their work and their personality? And if not, what explains?
To answer this question, we will have to turn to leading scientific research that has been ongoing for 30 years.
The Amazing Science of Human Motivation
As Dan Pink explains in his introduction to Drive, his book on job motivation, our understanding of what makes people act was turned upside down in the late 1940s. Until that moment, common sense said that people are motivated by a reward. The bigger the reward, the more people want to work.
Then Harry Harlow, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, began giving puzzles to rhesus monkeys in his primacy lab. He noticed an interesting effect: when he awarded monkeys for solving problems, they began to cope worse.
20 years later, Edward Deci, a Carnegie Mellon graduate at that time, tested this effect on people and got a similar result: getting money stupefied people when solving non-standard puzzles.
This was followed by 30 years of intensive research on human motivation.
In the end, Desi, working with his long-time co-author Richard Ryan, brought the variety of (often controversial) studies on this subject into one comprehensive model called the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This model has been repeatedly confirmed and summarizes all our knowledge of what leads to the fact that a person begins to love what he does. (A good review of the research of Ryan and Desican be found in the journal Psychological Inquiry).
Simply put, the SDT states the following:
To bring happiness, work must meet three universal psychological requirements: autonomy, competence, and affection.
In more detail ...
* Autonomy means that you yourself control how you spend your time. As Desi explains, when you have a great degree of autonomy then "you support your actions to the greatest extent."
* Competence means the ability to do something useful masterfully. According to psychologist Robert White (Robert White), people have a "tendency to affect the environment, as well as achieve valuable results in it."
* Attachment means a sense of connectedness with others. As Desi accurately noted: "to love and care, and to be loved and surrounded by care."
The SDT explains why Laura’s career resonates with us. She obviously has autonomy (she selects projects herself and works on them according to her schedule) and competence (she is very respected and accordingly awarded for her expert skills). She also has affection, with her well-knit teams and with her family and friends thanks to the opportunity to spend more time with them.
Exposing the principle of introspection
SDT answers the question: Is the principle of introspection valid? A key feature of the three SDT requirements is their versatility - they extend to different career areas and different career cultures. In other words: three decades of research have shown that the characteristics that make us happy at work have little to do with our personality and desires.
This study will greatly help those who worry a lot about such things. It makes no sense to lose sleep because of the question "is this the work that I would like to do all my life." The way to work correctly by itself will lead to a suitable job.
Our next goal is “work right” ... work
right
Research shows that autonomy, competence, and affection are key to loving what you do. So how do you achieve them? There are many answers, but, in my opinion, the best strategy consists of two simple parts:
1. Masterfully master a rare and valuable skill.
2. Invest in career achievements in the right rewards.
The world owes you nothing. Your boss is not required to allow you to choose a project, or spend a week from a month working on writing novels in a beach house. These are valuable rewards. To get them you need to collect your own career capital by mastering any skill that is rare and valuable.
However, it is equally important to invest this capital, when it is collected, in the right rewards. The word “correct” is here defined by the characteristic features of the SDT. In other words, as soon as you gain something valuable for the employer, use it to gain autonomy, competence, and affection as much as you can fit into your life.
This explains, for example, why there are many CEOs in the world who are excellent at what they do, but at the same time they are tense, restless and unhappy. They accumulated a career capital and became excellent in management, but instead of investing it in something that, as we know, would make them happy, they exchanged it for greater prestige and income. The great demands of their work suck out all of their sense of autonomy, while attachment leaves during late drinking at work.
Returning to Laura, we see that she is a great example of this system. In the 90s, she began working for one of the largest technology companies. She noted that the huge databases that are the core of the company's business are becoming increasingly important for the success of the company as a whole. She focused on mastering these systems. With the continued technological boom, her skills became increasingly rare and valuable. Instead of investing her achievements and becoming an overloaded vice president, she took an approach that maximized her autonomy, competence and affection - she became a freelancer.
From myself: I myself especially like the idea of freelancing, for various reasons, and as a result, the example of Laura from this article does not really impress me. However, in spite of this, my experience speaks in favor of SDT: my work allows me to work according to my schedule (freebies, by myself, no), I am appreciated (kmk), and I can do all kinds of useful things for work, and at the same time I I consider my current place of work the best of what I had to deal with. Personally, this article allowed me to consolidate my views and attitude towards work and, in general, suggested a direction for further movement.
It will be good if it is useful to someone else.
Like many, I have been working in IT for quite some time and some time ago I reached the state of “how did it all go bad.” From this state a desire arose to change not just work, but the field of activity in general. After a couple of attempts, I came to the conclusion (fairly obvious) that it is more profitable to stay, especially in a crisis.
The next step was the question of how to make sure that the work did not cause disgust, but ideally liked it. Since over time absolutely everything becomes boring, then to make it so like some conscious effort. The main problem with this is that it is not known for certain how to do this. A lot of different solutions are proposed, but what I saw did not make much impression on me, for various reasons. And the other day I came across an interesting article, a free translation of which I bring to your attention. Although this article discusses the approach to building a career in general, I think that in each specific job you can find something to improve using this approach.
Actually the article ...
The Great Career
Laura loves what she does. For many people, including me (and I have known her for the last 5 years), she represents the platonic ideal of
Laura’s great career - database genius. Companies hire her to comb their most hardened data into elegant structures. If you are lucky enough to hire her, she will assemble a team of selected programmers and will live in your office for up to six months. Then she will take your generous check and fly away to her charming house near Boston to find new ways to spend money.
She can skip months between projects - the payment is high enough to allow as much vacation as she wants. She takes advantage of this time to, among other things, obtain a pilot’s license, learn diving, and travel around Asia.
Introspection principle
Among the writers of the books “How to Make a Career”, the principle of introspection is very popular, which in brief is to evaluate your inclinations and desires, and somehow make it so that you can earn a living using them. Often this approach is characterized as a "source of satisfaction and great success." Also, this principle is often extended beyond career building, using it to set goals in life in general.
The principle of introspection is so ingrained that it is often forgotten that this is the same hypothesis as everyone else and, like all others, requires verification.
My question is very simple: when we look at people like Laura who love what they do, does their happiness explain the self-analytic coincidence between their work and their personality? And if not, what explains?
To answer this question, we will have to turn to leading scientific research that has been ongoing for 30 years.
The Amazing Science of Human Motivation
As Dan Pink explains in his introduction to Drive, his book on job motivation, our understanding of what makes people act was turned upside down in the late 1940s. Until that moment, common sense said that people are motivated by a reward. The bigger the reward, the more people want to work.
Then Harry Harlow, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, began giving puzzles to rhesus monkeys in his primacy lab. He noticed an interesting effect: when he awarded monkeys for solving problems, they began to cope worse.
20 years later, Edward Deci, a Carnegie Mellon graduate at that time, tested this effect on people and got a similar result: getting money stupefied people when solving non-standard puzzles.
This was followed by 30 years of intensive research on human motivation.
In the end, Desi, working with his long-time co-author Richard Ryan, brought the variety of (often controversial) studies on this subject into one comprehensive model called the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This model has been repeatedly confirmed and summarizes all our knowledge of what leads to the fact that a person begins to love what he does. (A good review of the research of Ryan and Desican be found in the journal Psychological Inquiry).
Simply put, the SDT states the following:
To bring happiness, work must meet three universal psychological requirements: autonomy, competence, and affection.
In more detail ...
* Autonomy means that you yourself control how you spend your time. As Desi explains, when you have a great degree of autonomy then "you support your actions to the greatest extent."
* Competence means the ability to do something useful masterfully. According to psychologist Robert White (Robert White), people have a "tendency to affect the environment, as well as achieve valuable results in it."
* Attachment means a sense of connectedness with others. As Desi accurately noted: "to love and care, and to be loved and surrounded by care."
The SDT explains why Laura’s career resonates with us. She obviously has autonomy (she selects projects herself and works on them according to her schedule) and competence (she is very respected and accordingly awarded for her expert skills). She also has affection, with her well-knit teams and with her family and friends thanks to the opportunity to spend more time with them.
Exposing the principle of introspection
SDT answers the question: Is the principle of introspection valid? A key feature of the three SDT requirements is their versatility - they extend to different career areas and different career cultures. In other words: three decades of research have shown that the characteristics that make us happy at work have little to do with our personality and desires.
This study will greatly help those who worry a lot about such things. It makes no sense to lose sleep because of the question "is this the work that I would like to do all my life." The way to work correctly by itself will lead to a suitable job.
Our next goal is “work right” ... work
right
Research shows that autonomy, competence, and affection are key to loving what you do. So how do you achieve them? There are many answers, but, in my opinion, the best strategy consists of two simple parts:
1. Masterfully master a rare and valuable skill.
2. Invest in career achievements in the right rewards.
The world owes you nothing. Your boss is not required to allow you to choose a project, or spend a week from a month working on writing novels in a beach house. These are valuable rewards. To get them you need to collect your own career capital by mastering any skill that is rare and valuable.
However, it is equally important to invest this capital, when it is collected, in the right rewards. The word “correct” is here defined by the characteristic features of the SDT. In other words, as soon as you gain something valuable for the employer, use it to gain autonomy, competence, and affection as much as you can fit into your life.
This explains, for example, why there are many CEOs in the world who are excellent at what they do, but at the same time they are tense, restless and unhappy. They accumulated a career capital and became excellent in management, but instead of investing it in something that, as we know, would make them happy, they exchanged it for greater prestige and income. The great demands of their work suck out all of their sense of autonomy, while attachment leaves during late drinking at work.
Returning to Laura, we see that she is a great example of this system. In the 90s, she began working for one of the largest technology companies. She noted that the huge databases that are the core of the company's business are becoming increasingly important for the success of the company as a whole. She focused on mastering these systems. With the continued technological boom, her skills became increasingly rare and valuable. Instead of investing her achievements and becoming an overloaded vice president, she took an approach that maximized her autonomy, competence and affection - she became a freelancer.
From myself: I myself especially like the idea of freelancing, for various reasons, and as a result, the example of Laura from this article does not really impress me. However, in spite of this, my experience speaks in favor of SDT: my work allows me to work according to my schedule (freebies, by myself, no), I am appreciated (kmk), and I can do all kinds of useful things for work, and at the same time I I consider my current place of work the best of what I had to deal with. Personally, this article allowed me to consolidate my views and attitude towards work and, in general, suggested a direction for further movement.
It will be good if it is useful to someone else.