It is also good to be able to feel you are making a change. This can be as simple as feeling like you are able to tweak company practices. Andrew Matheson, an admin/programmer at the University of Ballarat, describes how frustrating it is, for example, to be forced to work with buggy third-party systems without being able to make improvements to the code. "When you're on stuff that you can't fix and can't change it's not very rewarding," he says. "You have to feel like you're making a change, making it better."
Or sometimes these aspirations of change can be nobler. "I walked around the [University of Ballarat] health faculty a year ago and looked at some of the things the researchers were doing — looking at curing heart problems and things like that," Matheson says. "It gives you a bit of a warm feeling where you're able to be a part [however small] of the whole process where lives get saved in the future."
Gen Y values job satisfaction very highly. Many of us rate it higher than salary or wages. James Bernard, a Web developer at Monash University, explains why. "If you're earning big bucks and being stressed," he says, "coming home stressed, feeling bad working long hours every day, and outside of work life is suffering as well, I think the easy choice is to change so you're enjoying what you're doing."
The more down-to-earth of us realize big wads of cash can go a way towards taking the sting out of being lumbered with an unsatisfying job. Matt Bailey, Web information officer and a member of the Information Technology Services (ITS) team at QUT, is one such pragmatist. "If I were offered a job that was less satisfying for a significantly larger amount of money I might consider that," he says. But Bailey still considers job enjoyment to be more important. "Generally," he says, "it's job satisfaction for me over the actual cash."
Others do not care how big the carrot being dangled in front of their face is, if it means working a stressful, unsatisfying job. Matheson sums up this attitude nicely. If the job is satisfying, he says, "I don't give a shit about money. As long as I can pay the bills and buy little extra things that I want, I'm quite happy. I mean, I drive a Kingswood for Christ's sake."
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