The secret to enjoying your job

Today there was an article on slashdot titled “Pay vs. Happiness”. I posted the following response:

[The secret to enjoying your job] is to work in a field that you’re personally interested in, for a company that is small enough that they do care about the employees. You’ll rarely, if ever, find that in a large company; HP was once that way but Carly “fixed” that.

Most large companies consider employees to be completely interchangeable and replaceable like light bulbs.

That’s not to say that all small companies are good, though. Many tech startups have a business plan that requires making their employees work long hours and weekends until they burn out. Avoid those like the plague. They always tell prospective employees that they will reap big rewards on stock options, and in fact often insist that the employee should accept lower salary and worse benefits in exchange for the options. Don’t buy it. Options *might* pay off, but it’s a long shot. If they try to sucker you into such a plan, ask them to give you the salary and benefits you want and forget the options. They’ll almost never do that, which tells you that their real opinion on the value of their own options is that they are worthless; obviously you shouldn’t value them any more highly.

I’ve had the good fortune to have several enjoyable jobs at small companies, including my current job. At a few of them I did eventually make modest gains on stock options, but not enough for a down payment on a house. Well, maybe a down payment on a house somewhere other than in Silicon Valley.