Money Vs. Career Satisfaction: Which do you Choose?
Money Versus Career
Some of us choose our employers and career path based on compensation (and fully admit).
Others choose employers and a career based on job satisfaction (and are proud of it).
Most of us would probably say that we are somewhere in between.
But how many of us actually have a goal of finding a ‘happy medium’? A happy medium might be an unintended consequence of your pursuit of money or satisfaction, but I would venture to guess that 99% of us set out to achieve one of the two and hope that the other follows. Then there’s those of us who just aren’t quite able to fully commit to one or the other.
It’s always been an ongoing discussion going on inside my head and without committing to one end of the spectrum I’m in ‘happy medium land’. The debate sounds something like this:
Arguments for Money:
- Following this path could potentially set yourself up for becoming financially independent so that you may do whatever you’d like in life and not have to make money at all.
- A job is a job and as long as you’re working, you might as well be making the most return for your time investment.
- When you follow a path that leads to money you are developing a skill set that is in demand in our society and have a much better chance of getting hired and keeping a job.
- Your job is your job. You should leave it at 5 PM and enjoy the rest of your life.
Arguments for Job Satisfaction:
- Your passion should be what you do with your time. Life is too short to pursue other people’s or employer’s goals. Pursue your own, and rich or poor, happiness will follow.
- What good is money if you don’t enjoy what you do?
- If you love something you can become really good at it and money will follow.
Money and Career Discussion:
- What are your thoughts on the money vs. job satisfaction eternal debate?
- Leave a comment and take the poll!
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Struck a cord. I would say too scared to commit to either. On one hand I want the money. On the other, I want a job I love. It’s hard to find a balance between the two in our society. If you can find both, you’re a lucky one.
As I read this blog I have to say that I became a little concerned. Why, you ask, because I am of the firm belief that as a long term goal you can have both. If you are interested in looking more at how to create both I would suggest looking at this article 8 Steps to a Successful Career Transition http://bit.ly/N5oIr There are real solutions to fulfilling both of your goals.
Justin
Personally, I’ve found that doing what I love, ie. “making a hobby into a career” tends to backfire. I’ve always been a big computer nerd, went into the IT field, and it sapped all the fun out of it. I’ve got countless friends with the same story – video game designers that hate their job, artists that just churn stuff out, etc. I even wonder if its having to play the same damn songs over and over that makes rock stars turn to heroin. If you’re doing it for free, its play and its fun…if you’re being paid, the payer has some expectations, and its no longer free spirited play….it’s work.
As much as I’d like to get paid for playing nintendo all day long, if something is fun, a lot people are willing to do it for free, so you’re not going to get paid much, if at all. And if everyone just played nintendo for a living all day, society would break down and we’d starve to death. Someone’s gotta take out the trash, so comparatively very few people actually get to have that gratifying career anyway.
But dont get me wrong. The main point I’d like to make is that job satisfaction does not necessary mean “doing what you love”. I’ve more than satisfied with my job. I make my own hours, the pay is great, I like the people I work it, the job itself is fairly routine but that gives me the opportunity to either chat or listen to audiobooks all day while I work – and who wouldnt want to get paid to chat and read? I suppose you can say its a happy medium.
The people I know with “satisfying” jobs tasks tend to be the ones helping others, and tend to work the hardest – social workers, teachers, etc. Yes, even they gripe about their job, and rarely is it actually fun – you wouldnt choose to deal with 25 of someone else’s 12 year olds on your free time.
@GE – I definitely choose job satisfaction.
Why?
Because don’t have any guarantees for tomorrow. Assuming I don’t enjoy the process, I don’t want to waste several years of my life hoping to make partner or create a successful Fortune 500 company only to have my efforts come to nothing or to die the day after I achieve my goals.
That said, if you derive actual enjoyment from pursuing those activities that lead to wealth, then go forth with unbridled enthusiasm. If not, and you take the job satisfaction route, you still need to find some way to fund your lifestyle. For instance, painting canvas all day might be “something I love,†but painting canvas all day while starving is not something I love. So it wouldn’t make sense to paint canvas all day unless doing so allowed me to afford the basic necessities of life.
So in my opinion, taking the extreme in either direction (unless it’s a calculated short-term attempt to achieve both money and happiness) is just foolish.
Something else to note here re: the “you should just leave work at 5 and enjoy the rest of your life” – my boyfriend followed the money, he’s an attorney who works 60-80 hours/week and constantly gets told that he doesn’t work enough, that he needs to make a plan to make up his deficiencies, and that he’s in line to get laid off if the economy gets worse.
I followed my love – higher education. Have a totally stable job and get to leave at 5 every day. Worth the fact that I get paid less than half what he does, IMO.
I think a lot depends on personal situation. If someone is younger and really only has financial responsibility to themselves, then they may be more eager to choose satisfaction. If you have a family and need to support them, they may choose money.
@ Mark – you make a good point. You’re right, once expectations by an employer are added into the mix, it does change the dynamics.
@ Britt – I was talking about this with a co-worker today, and the discussion came up that society (particularly U.S. society) doesn’t tend to value those who follow the ‘explore life and do what you love’ path. Thoughts?
@ Georgie – That’s a shame that he has to feel that way after putting in all that time and effort. Glad you’re living your dream.
I’m going to choose “career satisfaction” because work is a huge portion of my life. The point of money is to make life better, so if my work-life has to suck, that kind of defeats the point. Maybe I’m just spoiled, but that’s just how I feel.
A red Ferrari is pointless if you don’t get to enjoy it.
However, I think Mark is right. I like to keep my hobbies and income separate– but I don’t think that means I can’t do something I enjoy. For example, I plan on getting into banking*, though I wouldn’t do statistics for fun.
I don’t think I would ever do art for pay. The reason is that I would feel like I was betraying my art to do it to someone else’s specs. I need to think more about it.
*Which, considering where I live, is just another typical business. No 50-story buildings for a few hundred miles of here.
What Mark said. And then, I learned a different kind of balance.
Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world.” When I worked for non-profits, I wanted to live in a world of conscientious, big-picture, philanthropic corporate executives who would donate to the organizations that paid me to do the work that I loved doing. Now I aim to *be* that executive.
I’m glad I tried “doing what I love” – over and over again, for about a decade. Being deeply committed to what I was doing, to the mission of one non-profit organization after another, made it that much more frustrating to see professionals sit on boards as window dressing to climb their career ladders, and to have the organization and mission warped according to the whims of people who were highly opinionated but rarely informed, and not invested.
At the corporate end, while working at a graphic design firm I watched Creatives bang their heads in frustration as their work got torn up by a client’s legal department only *after* hours of work had been invested, or worse yet, having to make changes to suit the executives’ “artistic” sensibilities.
By far one of my best working experiences was working in the lobbying department of a fortune 500 company. When stocks went up, people were happy. When they went down, people were not. That’s when I learned to love transparency, to compartmentalize, and to prioritize.
There’s a certain amount of money I need to pay my way, now and in retirement (if that still exists when I reach that age). I aim to do this in part to take care of myself, and in part so that my loved ones don’t have to worry about me quite so much.
Above that amount, I’m willing to trade money for doing work that interests and challenges me, in a work environment that offers transparency and accountability. I’ve gotten much better at hiring my employers, engaging them in constructive feedback, and learning how to fine tune my performance and expectations as well as those of my supervisors’. It helps that as I’ve gained experience, I’ve broadened my ideas about what it looks like to make a contribution and further my values. For example, I just graduated from law school, and am job hunting. If I wind up being in-house counsel for a corporation, you can bet that if necessary I will diplomatically suggest that we lower labor costs and increase efficiency by providing the legal parameters and requirements to the creatives when they receive the initial assignment, not after they’ve invested 20 hours in the campaign. Some veteran artist, somewhere, will be spared a measure of aggravation.
No matter what I’m doing, being well paid and promoted will help me further what I love. As I learned in my non-profit career, it’s amazing how many well-paid professionals are needed to donate money and to sit on non-profit boards.
I’d definitely advocate people stay away from the extremes.
The saying “money doesnt buy happiness” is absolutely, 100% positively true – keep in mind that by the mere fact that you live in a first world country, you are already by default rich, even if you work at taco bell, yet discontented people are all around us. No matter how much money you have, you’ll never run out of desire, so chasing it for it’s own sake is empty.
And thats not to say money doesnt matter. It might not matter when you’re living at home and eating out of your moms fridge. But when you need to put a roof on your head, it’s a different story, and when you’ve got mouths to feed other than your own, play time is over.
But the same also goes in reverse – as fulfilling as your job can be, you can ALWAYS find something to gripe about, and just like you can never have enough money, the grass is always greener somewhere else.
Sure, there are times I’d trade some cash or flexibility for a more fun, exciting or challenging job, but having money in my account has greatly reduced my stress level, and allows me to enjoy the rest of my day far more than I otherwise would.
But this is a 20-something blog, and quite a few do have the option to eat out of mom’s fridge – so if there ever will be a time to “do what you love”, now’s the time to do it. Maybe you’ll figure out how to do it, maybe you’ll figure out why not to do it, but at least youll be able to do it before baby needs his bottle.
I think we all work to live and hope that while we are young we can accumulate enough to be comfortable later in life. Maybe that way we can do what we link in the future and be less worried about financial constraints.
It all depends on your values, your family situation, and your goals in life. Some people prefer to work hard at a well-paying but unrewarding job for a while so they can afford to do something less stressful later. Other say, “Why wait? I want to be happy now!”
The important thing is to know why you’re making a certain choice and what the consequences may be. Don’t just stay in a rut because you don’t see any other possibilities.
Definitely money would be more important to me. The jobs that people enjoy that would earn a lot of money are very few and far in between. I would opt for the sake of my family to be miserable but be able to provide for them.
This is an interesting post at this point in my life. I am working for an organization that I fully believe in. I am on board with their mission and am proud to work there. On one hand, I’m satisfied. On the other, I’m looking for more.
As a soon to be MBA graduate, I’m eager to go out on my own and make my mark. I’m not just interested in the possible financial rewards, but the independence and freedom that comes from being the one in charge.
So right now, I guess I’m too scared to commit to either. But I do look forward to the day when I make the leap…
Thanks for the timely post.
Broke MBA,
Good luck to you! It’s great that you’re doing something you believe in. Believe in it more. Is there a way to combine what you want to do with what you’re doing? That might be difficult, but maybe you can pull it off and have the best of both worlds.
@ Broke MBA ~
I think you’d enjoy Ode Magazine (www.odemagazine(dot)com). They feature businesses and people from around the world, that use for-profit business ventures to spur innovation, spread wealth, enhance well being, etc.
I believe it was founded by the same folks that founded Utne.
It offers a wealth of ideas for people looking to be inspired, create a list of contacts and doors to knock on, etc. The web site is a good representation of the span of the magazine, but the print version goes into much more (engaging) depth.
Best of luck on this next leg of your adventure!
I struggle with this on a regular basis.
I must choose on the first factor that effect to me and my family. If I have plenty of money, sure I will work on my interesting area and no need to care about it. Just doing on what I love.
I think that reading through these comments is very interesting. I’m an 18 year old college freshman, and I imagine that I’ll be going through this dilemma at one point. Currently, I’m on track to be a corporate lawyer. I have no idea if that’s what I’m going to want to do with my life though. There definitely needs to be a balance between enjoyment and money, but I will go for the money first. I have no objection to working 60-80 hours per week. I’ve done it already, and while it’s not incredibly fun, the mercenary part of me enjoys the cash immensely. I obtain a great deal of satisfaction from looking at my Mint account.
@Georgie: It sounds like the boyfriend is being asked to optimize his billing (or pad if you want to use a more negative word). It’s regrettable that the time that he is already putting in isn’t being appreciated, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. He could always send out his resume if he’s really unhappy and stressed. It’s always easiest to get a job when you have one.
@Mneiae, I actually don’t think he’d mind if he was being paid industry standard, but he’s not. He’s job hunting starting in January, and we’re looking at other cities where he’ll make way more, partly because he’ll have to support me (at least temporarily) if we move to follow his career.
If that all goes down, then my actual plan is to “optimize” the freelance & entrepreneurial opportunities that I’m currently involved in and become totally self-sufficient that way!
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