3 Signs of a Miserable Job
17 Oct 2010I read “3 Signs of a Miserable Job” and found it to have some good insights into jobs, career and particularly management. It’s an easy read, most of the book in the form of a fable, readable in an evening or two.
It can be found on Kindle or iBooks.
Below are some screen-captures of passages I liked (sorry for the images as opposed to text):
Summary of the “3 Signs”
The book makes it clear that it doesn’t matter what the job is nor does higher compensation ultimately negate the need of these things.
In the end, the manager is the person who has the biggest impact on a persons happiness in their job and the case is made as to the importance of a manager in the life of those he manages yet how most managers don’t realize this nor act on it - hence the misery of many in what would otherwise be fulfilling and satisfying jobs.
For me “immeasurement” is the one that hits closest to home as being something that affects me in my day to day life and that I’ve done poorly when I’ve managed others.
Software development (where I personally have experience and can apply these lessons) in general is difficult in this regard - projects and code are never really done. Sure, something is deployed or ships, but then it’s on to fixing things, adding the next feature or whatever, and rarely does an individual person have full impact on a product or system such that they can measure their success with it, especially on large teams or products.
Timelines or task completion are impossible to use as yardsticks as they vary wildly and change all the time - the very definition of “moving goalposts”. Don’t even get me started on “lines of code” - the worst possible form of measurement. Bugs (or lack thereof) don’t work either for many reasons that I won’t get into here.
I have yet to see an objective way of measuring software development that works - any ideas?