Oof. This is probably most people, too.

There need to be more jobs where the interest alignment in work is 100%. Disney animators, Nintendo programmers, audio programming, SpaceX engineers, ML/AI, bioinformatics, ... Rockets, chemicals, machines, visual toys, solving moonshot things, ...

Less plumbing and glue code. Less adtech. Less studying and optimizing trivial human interactions that nobody will remember.

> There need to be more jobs where the interest alignment in work is 100%. Disney animators, Nintendo programmers, audio programming, SpaceX engineers, ML/AI, bioinformatics, ...

Some of these jobs can involve crunch time, low pay, and other forms of employee abuse, since people are willing to suffer for the sake of their passion. Sometimes boring work is the healthier option.

^^ this

Would add: prestige law and government jobs; trying to be an actor; working at Amazon; working as a chef/cook at most restaurants, esp fancy ones--the list is quite long of "passion jobs" that pay poorly and involve all sorts of abuse people wouldn't put up with at other jobs.

working at Amazon is a passion job?

I think people would generally describe "software at FAANG" as a high quality job. Amazon is being called out here because it is notoriously stressful compared to the rest.

Yeah I guess that label isn't accurate for Amazon (and a lot of other bigtech jobs) and prestige law, which are more about social status, etc.

I think more prestige. But yeah, for some people.

FWIW, I find glue code and integration to be quite rewarding sometimes. You take other good, useful things and connect them, resulting in a new/bigger/better useful thing... without "doing anything"! :)

Seriously, for some of the things you mentioned, I suspect the key is to NOT be highly focused on the career path which pays the most. I kind of doubt that audio programmers are paid as much as Sharepoint developers, but I would hope they have more fun.

I work in audio machine learning, and it's pretty great. :)

Sometimes people call it a niche field, but I think they are typically just over focused on imagenet.

there's a lot of jobs like this out there -- and a lot of people working in them -- but you pay a premium for it. I think economists even have a term for it. employers don't have to charge as much when people are willing to take a pay cut to do the work.

be careful what you wish for, though. in the entertainment industry, for people like actors and directors, the pay cut is only at the early stages, and unions limit how deep it goes even then. for video games, though, it's an absolute nightmare. interest alignment in work, in that case, can turn into a recipe for suffering.

The haskell tax.

I like my job. I mean, it's not necessarily my _passion_, but I care about the cause and believe I contribute directly and significantly to it. And while there is a lot of plumbing to do, I also have freedom to explore news ideas and learn new things.

But "anything I do for work" was my first thought when I saw this post.

What it comes down to is that there's only so much I can do to help my work's projects succeed. There's just too much out of my control. Decisions have already been made; contracts are already being signed; the clients believe they've done enough testing.

I can pick up the slack, go above and beyond, and do other people's job. But the project can still fail to get user buy-in, fail to make any notable impact, fail to make or save money, or just outright fail for reasons I can do nothing about.

That doesn't mean I don't try. I just don't care if these projects succeed. If we did what we could and learned things we can carry forward, I'm satisfied.

I work in data and ML and it’s mostly plumbing and glue code lol

People seriously underrate how important data cleaning and massaging is in ML though.

Unless you're constantly changing jobs, it doesn't last.

Have you considered using "will the skills I hone here help me with my side projects?" as a way to decide which job to apply for?

I don't have enough data to say it's a good idea, but so far I'm liking it.

For me at least, its not the work tasks itself, its the dealing with the company and the amount of inefficiency that gets in the way of being able to do my tasks. When I do them, I enjoy them. Waiting a week for information and not being allowed to work on other tasks in the mean time will make anyone a little demotivated.

I'm doing/have done this!

I took my current job (in communications) in order to get better at outreach, marketing, etc. for when I work for myself since that's what I was the weakest at as a freelancer. I'm also interested in tech ethics so I took a job in politics so I could become more familiar with how the sausage is made.

Now I'm looking for a swe job so I can get more experience working in teams of devs since most of the tech work I've done has been solo work.

I'll let you know how it worked out in 10 years?

It's always been the reverse for me - side projects have tended to give fresh input that my day job doesn't provide.

Useful metric!

Among the other factors, which are:

"Does this job allow me to have time to do side projects?"

"Does this job provide the funds for my hobby?"

I feel this way too. Success is measured in just "is my employer happy with what I do?"