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I have been wondering how best to evaluate my current job, and unsurprisingly, I turned to my trusted friend and confidante, ChatGPT. After three months away, I have returned as a paying member, and boy, did I miss it.
I think a good job has two dimensions; intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Or put plainly, do you enjoy it, and does it remunerate you well. My AI buddy was able to tease this out a bit more, and divided these two categories into five questions each; 10 questions, scored from 0-10, gave me a grand total of 100.
I ended up scoring a 73, with an average of 7.2 for the intrinsic, and 7.4 for the extrinsic. What pushed me over the line was the great benefit I have, which is being fully remote. If I have a laptop, I have an office. This has allowed me to spend months in Aus and NZ, call in from Whistler on a boy’s ski trip, road trip through Utah, and soon visit NYC for a week. It’s something that I wasn’t wild about at the start, but now it works REALLY well with our current lifestyle.
What dragged down my intrinsic rewards was a single question; does your work align with a greater purpose, mission, or value of yours. I scored it a six.
That felt fair. I DO believe that innovation is the only way we can do more with less, and on a finite planet with infinite needs and wants, we’re going to need a LOT of it. But at the same time, I don’t work for MSF.
This exercise gave me a lot to think about. Firstly, it was an exercise in gratitude. It’s easy to think “I don’t get paid enough” or “my friend at Microsoft gets free lunch”. Actually putting a number to it makes you reflect that actually, things are pretty good. The score of 73 isn’t a percentile; I imagine that I’m in the top 20% of people when it comes to job satisfaction, which feels about right.
It also shows you where you can best prioritise. If I was to raise my score in the future, how could I do that? What are low hanging fruit? Is it finding more purpose in my work, or is it going for a pay rise?
Finally, it became quite clear that the law of diminishing returns was starting to throw its weight around. Take pay for example. Going from a 2 to a 4 probably doesn’t require a huge pay increase; when I did catering while at uni, getting Saturday overtime was a big deal! Going from a 7-9, however, probably requires a significant bump, probably doubling. A few doubles and you’re in very rare air.
There is also the trade off component as you start rising up. As mentioned before, I scored a 6 in values and purpose. Perhaps if I worked for MSF, that would be a ten. But what do you give up? Spending 6 months working in a Congolese hospital is high status and high purpose, but it isn’t well paid, you work a LOT, and worst of all, you’re in the Congo. Earning 500k+ might max out the remuneration score, but those jobs have their own struggles and difficulties.
Overall, it was a worthwhile exercise. Let me know your scores or thoughts.