WhichJobtoChoose

I received an email today asking about payscales for architects and project managers. The person wanted to know who was paid more.

I don't track payscales -- they're geography- and company-size dependent. So I suggested the person choose the job they love. The money would follow.

How do you know which job you're going to love? Many of us are capable of performing more than one role in the organization. I'm not good at software architecture, but I could see being torn between development management, project management, and test management.

How do you make your decisions when it comes to picking a job? -- JohannaRothman 2005.01.11

Which will allow me to learn more, the more new stuff the better? Which will allow me to try out a different role, function, skill, expected outcome, etc.? Which will allow me to learn more about myself?

-- JimBullock 2005.01.11

Which job doesn't require me to move to a rainy city? ;-) I'm starting a new job later this month where I can continue to work on MacOsx and finally get back to working in Cocoa/Objective-C.

--KeithRay 2005.01.11

Congratulations! -- Johanna What she said! -- Mike Outstanding. Good for you! -- Jim

I agree with JimBullock about learning. That's always been my first criterion--if I'm not learning, I move on. But within that, I need a job where nobody tells me how I have to do my job. If I take such a job (in my consulting business), then find out about it, I terminate quickly. - JerryWeinberg 2005.01.11

I'm with Jim and Jerry: learning motivates me more than anything else. That's why I gradually moved from languages to management (too broadly focused) to software development (too narrowly focused) to training (learning heavy but limited by the topics taught) to software test (just right! for me). Each allowed more learning. However, job choice doesn't end there. I appreciate Jerry's identification of a primary demotivator. When I have my hands tied (a common phenomenon in software test) and am only allowed to test one way, I learn nothing. So it's not just the job title. I, now, evaluate my job opportunities to see if I will be allowed to bring the how to the job and learn more how while I'm there. But I had to learn that the hard way. -- MikeMelendez 2005.01.11

I also look for the job that I think will be the most fun.

I separate learning into learning about how to do my job better and learning from the other people. For me, the other-people learning can be about people-skills (most often, now) or techniques in the job (earlier in my career). I find that by learning about people skills, I'm more apt to learn the technical things. -- JohannaRothman 2005.01.12

I like jobs that help me bridge into new areas. This relates to learning, but in new areas. There's the old question about 10 years of experience. Is it that, or 1 year's experience 10 times? DonGray 2005.01.17

Yep -- opportunities to learn, and tell me what you want but leave me alone to figure out how. Also lots of problems to solve. I work as a test manager in IT services, mainly on integration projects. It's an ideal model for me. I get to go into a new project about every 6 to 8 months. Typically, most of it will be new to me: client, business domain (often), application domain, mix of technical environments, test team, project manager, etc. Of course there are commonalities between integration tests, but so far each has presented its own set of interesting problems. The timeframe is long enough to learn a lot and do a solid piece of work, but short enough (usually) to keep me from getting bored and restless to move on. I find I'm at my most creative on troubled projects (because there are more problems to solve), but need the respite of less crazy projects in between, to synthesize and extend the learnings from the awful ones. And I lack stamina for too much of the physical and pyschic wear and tear that go with troubled projects. - FionaCharles 19-Jan-2005

Updated: Wednesday, January 19, 2005