CAREER ADVICE
Keeping the Joy in Your Work Will Make You Complete
Don’t let a promotion steal your mojo
What gives you joy in your work? When do things feel right? Pay special attention to those details. You’ll need to ensure that promotions or changes in your career don’t extinguish that joy.
It can happen subtly over the years and you won’t recognize it until it’s too late. A series of promotions can remove the joy you experienced in your work before. This isn’t uncommon with a move into management when you no longer do the day-to-day activities that you enjoyed as an individual contributor.
I witnessed this a number of times during my career in Silicon Valley. Talented engineers and designers would be promoted into management as a reward for consistently doing great work. After a few months, they would realize that they were no longer able to do what gave them joy at work: actually designing interfaces and writing code.
A few of these managers privately shared this unhappiness with me. They missed their old jobs, but there was no going back. They didn’t want to give up the promotion and raise. So, they just seemed frustrated, unhappy, and vaguely dissatisfied every day.
