Do you feel like your job is important? Do you feel like you "make a difference"? Does it matter to you? Are you fulfilled (whatever the fuck that means)? Do you feel like a cog in a wheel, or does your work excite you?

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Answers

Yes on all accounts, but it varies during the day. When my work isn't exciting me, I'm posting and goofing off like I am right now :) But for the most part, I know that what I do (work with college students) is very intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling. I do make a difference.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Most of my tasks are tedious and dont feel too important.. but what my team does, as a whole, is very important, and I've been able to see how it makes a critical difference to the people we serve. (We manage development of tools for the EOD community).

I don't know if I've ever had a job that made so much difference, even if my little bit of it doesn't seem all that vital in the grand scheme of things.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Until I turned 30, I believed with all my heart that I had to have a high powered career-type job - be the best in my field, the CEO, the youngest tenured prof, the whiz kid who saved the world from sure destruction.

Now I realize that nothing that I find 'fulfilling' is attached to a paycheque, and I want some job where I just put in my 40 hours for reasonable compensation, and evenings and weekends I do the things I love. I just want a job that pays my bills and supports my hobbies and interests.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

My job is important, a lot of people rely on me. Is it important to me? No. Is it fulfilling? No. It's pretty thankless. And when you are the central person for 300 other people, someone is always bitching about something. It does pay well...

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Hmm, interesting question.

I'm a tech writer at a company that sells computer software and hardware. We sell stuff that nobody else makes - it's used by stock exchanges and big companies that need to update their databases constantly. A lot of internet commerce is only possible or at least runs better on our systems. So yeah, I feel my work is important. Those companies need us, and they need my manuals to understand how to use the products. I feel especially warm 'n' fuzzy about this because I'm responsible for the error messages manual and you KNOW that everybody reads that one.

But philosphically, it's not that important. In a hundred years nobody will care. We're not curing cancer or creating something beautiful and lasting.

It doesn't bother me a lot. As long as I know that somebody is using the things I do, I feel okay. That's why I've found computer work satisfying, and why I used to like to do customer service for a bank. If one person a day said to me "Thanks for straightening out my account" I felt good.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

What Kristin said. I mean, *exactly* what Kristin said. I was having a conversation with a college friend the other night who basically believes that since he was voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school, and since he is very intelligent, he therefore is "wasting his life" in his current job which is not particularly challenging.

I told him he's full of crap. Life is life. If your work is challenging and important to you, great. If it's not, use your free time to do the stuff you want to do. The worst possible situation is to be in a job you hate that takes up so much of your time that you *can't* do the things you want to do. No job is worth that, no matter how well it pays. I would rather work part time at McDonald's than 60 hours a week as some corporate flunky, and that's the truth.

My current job is sort of in between. I do enjoy what I do, but I have no delusions that this is what I want to do forever, or that I'm somehow changing the world by editing books about FrontPage and Excel. Sometimes I put in 40 hours a week, but more often I put in 30-35. Or less, depending on my mood. I never work on weekends. (Well, I did once, but never again.) I am generally happy with this.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

Ugh. Well if I was still working for the Chronicle of Higher Education or the Medical Center, maybe.

But I haven't felt like my work is important or valued for a while. I'm a web designer and -what- I put up online sort of defines whether or not I feel good about my work.

I'm also unemployed right now, so well ... how do I feel about looking for a job? I hate it, in this market. I've put out something on the order of 50 resumes and gotten zero callbacks.

I'd like to do something that has more meaning to it. Work for a non- profit even if the money isn't much, work for a library, a school, an environmental group ... something that's got some teeth to it.

I'm just not all that interested in working somewhere, that profitability for the sake of profitability is the ultimate goal. I'm also skittish of working for a small branch of an international company again after what I went through at my last job. Screaming at the top of my lungs to be listened to and completely ignored.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001

I know my teaching makes a difference and I've improved the quality of English writing in Finland. My other research might turn out to be useless, but I enjoy it, and I probably won't get to do it forever anyway.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001

I suppose my work is important in some small way. I am a media pollster and I think polling serves one and only one useful purpose - to act as a reality check on pundits and politicians who love to speak as if their singular opinion is the "voice of the people." Our polling is done the old fashioned, high standards, probability sampling way. This allows me to think we contribute is something a little bit more than just another voice in the general media clamor. It is *occasionally* quite exciting to be so closely caught up in current events, I've been interviewed and written articles about our research which was fun, but rarely happens. It also pays pretty well.

On the other hand, most of the time we work our asses off for something that is old news one day after publication. I am not creating something of beauty, or making life better for people, or, or, or. So in the grand scheme of things, it is not important at all.

Once a few years ago when I was killing myself over an impending deadline, working like an insane thing late into the night, I was also listening to Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. I found myself wishing I was laboring long to produce a symphony or concerto or anything else that actually meant something and would last beyond next week. That underlying feeling of futility has stayed with me ever since.

Am I fulfilled? No. I have some big issues with my workplace, as anyone who reads my journal knows. I am hoping to get a degree that will let me translate my skills to somewhere where I'll be paid less, but can respect my work more. Survey research for environmental non- profits, for example. Or party polling, which I would not necessarily respect myself more for, but would satisfy my desire to draw partisan blood.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001

I used to think it wasn't important... I mean, who *really* needs another writer? Big woo. But I still have people mention things (web things or some of my older print things) to me that made them laugh or made a small difference in how they perceived their own conflicts / crises and I think, hey, I connected. Maybe made a little difference, and that felt good. Who knows, in the long run, really? Someone doing something seemingly insignificant right now may impact someone else, who goes on to do great things... but wouldn't have if not for that one small act by the other person. I like to think about positive things like that. It makes the other stuff I do -- the boring accounting work, the tedious household junk, bearable.

On the other side of my life equation, I know what I do mom-wise is important. It's not always fulfilling -- many times it's so frustrating and heartbreaking and mentally challenging. Then again, the kids are happy, healthy and we're navigating the hard stuff of life and teen years pretty well, so maybe that makes a difference after all. I know when they both hug me at night and tell me they love me, (not bad for teenage boys), it sure feels terrific.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2001

My personal work is not important; with technology and better software training I'd be obsolete. But the work of the people I support is important; they contribute to the knowledge base. (My friend who worked (past tense) for Amazon and web research said that his job was support too; I countered that anyone who doesn't have to send someone else's faxes or makes over $30K isn't support.) We research issues so policymakers can make better policy; we work for representational democracy. That's important. Now that I'm doing some of the research myself, my job, or at least that fraction of my job, is important--inasmuch as I find it fulfilling and it keeps me off the streets.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2001

I'm helping to perpetuate academia. I will (probably) be important to some students, as their thesis advisor or the professor that first taught them about thing X that was really interesting to them. I will do research, and I may make some interesting discoveries that may have some implications for medical research. However: could academia get along without me? Yes. Will I be the next Einstein? No. Is the goal of perpetuating academia a good one? Maybe. I've heard that if we continue creating new scientists at the same rate, by 2160 everyone in America will have some kind of science degree. I'm not sure that's entirely necessary.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2001

I love my job. I'm doing what I like to do (write) and it actually does perpetuate a weird sort of power. If someone pisses me off, for example, I can often find a round about way to write about the situation. What I love about what I do is every part of my life can be worked into it. My work is my life and my life is my work. I expect that to become more and more the case the older I get and the higher I move up the ol' career ladder.

Work takes up so much of our lives that if you don't like what you do -- if getting out of bed in the morning fills you with dread -- then I am a whole-hearted supporter of changes. No one is too old to start over. Especially in a career market that no longer has long-term job tracks. I talk to CEOs everyday, and most of them have not been in the position they are in for more than three years. Our society's job market is becoming more and more fragmented, and while that has a large down sides, the good sides allow for more and more changes.

IG

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2001

Heh.

My work is very important. I'm managing a project which will soon release a digital library of internal tobacco industry documents. I suspect this is only the first of many such archives (chemical industry, car & tire manufacture, etc). There's enough work to do just improving access to the initial set of 40 million pages that I might do it for the rest of my life.

But you know what? I am a poet. I only became a librarian to not starve. I miss teaching writing. I miss writing.

Irony?

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

I never thought I would wind up writing a long post in favor of selfishness, but that's where it ended up. Sigh. I have real misgivings about even posting this -- you'll probably decide (or mentally note this as another confirmation) that I'm an awful, awful person.

Bottom line is, the difference that my work makes is purely private and almost entirely financial (a fancy way of saying I make a lot of money for my family), but that seems to be enough for me for now.

First, remember that I spent six years studying for the priesthood. I saw the personal sacrifices demanded if you want to "make a difference." And even the most extreme examples, say, foreign aid workers and missionaries, still spend their daily lives mostly filling out their organization's forms and following its procedures. And most of the rest of their time is spent trying to get a grant to re-roof the clinic, re-roofing the clinic, or travelling among the many clinics that they staff. The number of days they spend actually carrying orphans out of flood zones through the crossfire of a civil war are pretty limited.

As you accept fewer and fewer sacrifices so as to get closer and closer to a normal life that lets you raise a family in reasonable security, the "making a difference" component seems to shrink exponentially. Let's take an example. My mother-in-law would love to see us move back to Maine and she'd like to see me doing something intrinsically fulfilling. Why don't I give up this high-stress 80-hour a week (okay, it's 55 hours in this quarter's seasick economy) job, she says, and go work for the Pine Tree Council, or whatever it's called, and fight for poor Mainers' right to housing, medicine and child support?

The answer, I blush to admit, is that I don't want to deal with all those poor Mainers. I worked for them when I was in seminary. In the summer of 1985 I worked at a soup kitchen, and it was hard, hard work. I don't recall any great moments. I recall being treated pretty much as restaurant help is treated anywhere by the patrons, and the whole point to my work was that I was supposed to make them feel like patrons. Our motto was "Poor people deserve beautiful things," not "Poor people should stand in line and be grateful for what they get." I did my job and I lobbied for food from good places and kept the cafeteria clean and the volunteer staff polite and tried to show the face of Jesus to a bunch of hungry lobstermen in the off season and I was never so glad to go back to school in my entire life.

If I went the the Pine Tree Council I expect it would be the same. I expect it would be awkward to say, "Well, see, I'm working for you because I want to make a difference in your life, so please don't call me after your 3-11 shift or expect me to come in on weekends. Because, see, I'm doing a goodthing by taking your case at all." To the contrary, they would likely be even more demanding than my current clientele because they would really, really need the child support payment or the medicine, and soon. Oh -- and I'd be earning less than 20 cents on the dollar of what I'm making this year, maybe less than 15 cents.

A more abstract thinker might take pleasure in putting power in the people's hands to resist the deadbeat dads and heartless HMOs, but I would mostly notice that my wife had to go back to work and the kids' college fund wasn't growing.

my family was not well-to-do growing up. When the fridge broke down it was a crisis. We got our car fixed by a guy who did careful work and charged only $5 an hour, but he was a little slow because he only workedwhen he wanted to. I had to pay my own way through college and law school. It wasn't terrible, but I looove being able to replace our broken appliances. I love having enough money to buy a deli sandwich for lunch without guilt, and saving for the kids' college the way you're supposed to.

Every working day I say to myself, I hate this pace, but how can I afford to give this deal up? The theoretical pleasure of doing public advocacy law doesn't seem like enough.

Does that mean that "making a difference" doesn't matter to me? No. But when put on the spot, I have to admit that it doesn't matter enough. I've complained about this job for years, but in the end it's sort of like democracy -- the worst arrangement, except for all the others. So, I'm a cog in a wheel. And no, I'm not fulfilled. Oh well.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001