ACROSS ALL FIELDS Why do you love your job?

Hi Lisa,

You ask a great question. And it's one that too few people ask themselves before they get stuck in jobs and careers that they aren't passionate about.

I love my job because I've enjoyed making art since I was a kid. Actually, I had done a time capsule, "Letter to my future self" thing back in 6th grade. In it, I had imagined having a job making art for video games. A couple of decades later and I had achieved that goal. And having been in the industry for 10 years I can honestly say that I've had a great time at some wonderful companies.

However, it wasn't a straight shot from 6th grade to the video games industry. I ended up meandering a bit and majored in biology at UC Berkeley. I enjoyed my time there and my field of study but art was always on my mind. I eventually worked in IT management while pursuing a masters degree in art. When I finally finished the program I was fortunate that a friend from Berkeley was working at Electronic Arts and got my portfolio to the right people allowing me to get my foot in the door.

My coworkers have been and continue to be fun to work with. I've been additionally fortunate to have had great managers and art directors who have helped me to develop and advance my skills. I've also learned much from my friends and peers. For me, personally, it's kind of hard to find anything to complain about; getting paid to paint and draw for video games that entertain people all over the world. I can be creative and artistic and analytical when coming up with ideas to fit certain games and mechanics. It's challenging yet fun work.

And of course I'm fortunate to have a very nice salary and plenty of perks like free meals, snacks, video game lounges, and the like in addition to basic things like health care, 401(k) plans, and other financial benefits.

So yeah, I have many, many reasons to love my job. I hope that you are able to find a job that you love as well.

Dear Lisa,

I think there is an intrinsic human desire to work on something that matters significantly positively to either a targeted group of people or some large number of people. Being able to do that in a career where one has a measure of proficiency (while having at most a manageable amount of stress) is probably what makes a job really great. I can tell you my story.

I was interested in computers from an early age where my father took me to the Lawrence Hall of Science (http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org). This was the only place one could gain access to a reasonably powerful computer in those days. I was particularly interested in the program ELIZA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA). During college, I studied math and physics thinking of how I can apply computational methods to these fields. Those majors dovetailed nicely into my Ph.D. which was on developing new methods of solving complex mathematical equations, such as those that model how artificial arteries are formed.

Afterwards, I was a college professor for a number of years, where I enjoyed both researching new ways of applying computational methods to new chemical and biological problems and teaching students computer science. That was very enriching in that one gets to see students learn and grow as well as develop some new knowledge.

For a while I wanted to do more research in computational biology so I worked at a couple of academic institutions in the Boston area. I think the most rewarding part of the job was developing software that helps diagnose patients with novel genetic diseases and discovering new mechanisms of cancer. After that, I worked at a pharmaceutical start up writing software to help develop a new class of drugs. In both cases, it was about impact of the work on a number of patients. That was really great. OK, the fact that the start up eventually went public was a real monetary bonus. :-) But, in all seriousness, I generally don't think of money as the primary reason in selecting a job. I think really enjoying a job leads to success which has the side effect of having monetary rewards.

Finally, I wound up at Google where I work in improving the search experience. Indeed, I came full circle from my early days of liking ELIZA since much of what I do day to day is on natural language parsing. What makes this job really fabulous is that the software is used to help hundreds of millions of users around the world. Google lets employees take ownership of projects and allows then to think about how best to improve things often through some creative ways. I get to do this job with great coworkers in a terrific environment with great perks (and it does pay nicely).

In the end, for me it is about what do I leave behind. If I can say I did a good job in helping improve in some (maybe even small) way lives of others, then it was pretty good.

I hope this helps. Best wishes!

I love to paint! Always have but didn't consider it for a career until I was in my mid thirties. I have 4 daughters so parenting was first, but I was always making signs for school and church or painting gifts to save money, etc. While I was busy doing other things I became a competent painter. I wish I'd started earlier.
Since I turned 40 I have been the Paint Shop Manager or an Exhibits Shop, Painted multi-million dollar exhibits, and currently paint only in large theaters and museums as well as restorative painting and faux finishing. I just kept at it. I never finished college (Art Major) but have been in my own painting school most of my life.

People refer you and only care about results, ethics and attitude. It is your steadfast passion coupled with a humble attitude that makes you good and marketable. Learn your trade, do free-bees at first, then charge according to your skill. Just goes up from there. Oh yeah, and make friends with a few failings but work through them. Get to the other side with your chin up.

I love my job because (and this is going to make me sound horrible) I like picking apart someone's work and finding problems with it. That type of work has appealed to me since I can remember. From dismantling things, to editing papers, to checking homework, it's all fun to me.

I think it's fun to go to work and interact with people. I LOVE people. I was a Stay At Home Mom for a couple of years and, while I love my daughter, it made me realize that the lack of human interaction is impossibly boring.

There are days when I don't want to go to work. But my job is fun!