In principle it's an interesting idea, however, I'm not sure how meaningful this kind of tracking is. Even the author seems to wonder about this - rating a work day as an 8, but realizing it was the relaxing he did that day that effected his happiness. And unless you're reflecting back weeks when making your rating, this kind of tracking could be susceptible to the idea of "boiling the frog".
Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
11–20 of 128 posts
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#12This is great! I wish I'd started doing something like this long ago. The closest thing I've found to this that I'm able to at least remind myself to use regularly is this, https://daylio.webflow.io/ It'd be interesting to leverage something like this to decide when I should take vacation... If my happiness is slowly decreasing and visualized like this, it'd serve as a nice reminder to schedule some vacation. I'd als…
I just tried this one, (and another one, Journal which both seems to be Google 'editors choice'), but I found that both only had 5 possible moods (basically: exstatic, good, meh, bad, terrible) , and I fear me data will just be 90% "good".
Do you know if it can be configured to have more levels? Or if other apps have more specificity?
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#13asd
I don't think licensure is part of the definition of "engineer"
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#14asd
> Haha, when someone calls themselves an engineer without being more specific, it's almost always either a civil engineer or software developer. You went on to assume that he's a software engineer when in fact his is a civil engineer. Also because you didn't like software development it's weird that someone else might?
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Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#15I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…
I was there at about 10 years, now after 12 years I'm happy again because I realized that when I was happy it was because I was ignoring the corporate politics, the unfair promotions and the bad work ethics. Now I learned to be vocal about it when it impacts me and delegate the responsibility of fixing it or giving feedback, and ignore it when it doesn't affect me... maybe give a heads up there, like, "hey maybe they are just spewing bullshit to keep you busy and really need to solve some issue between them! be careful!" and then get back to what I need to do.
Yes my work now as senior whatever or whatever whatever manager is not as easy as Jr. Sysadmin, but it's rewarding if the organization is functional, once I learn the ins and outs and after figuring out what to worry about and what to not worry about.
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#16I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…
Yeah, I feel the same way.
What hurts is when you decide to switch to another company, which has good rep, and finally find out: it's the same. Everywhere. After the big bosses do stupid shit, they get promoted elsewhere, leaves you fix the broken plates, rince and repeat until a merger, bankruptcy, or major reorg. Meanwhile middle management gets bigger and everything gets slower. Good employees leave, bad one get promoted to middle management, and you wonder why you're stupid enough to stay there.
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#17I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…
I was there at about 10 years, now after 12 years I'm happy again because I realized that when I was happy it was because I was ignoring the corporate politics, the unfair promotions and the bad work ethics. Now I learned to be vocal about it when it impacts me and delegate the responsibility of fixing it or giving feedback, and ignore it when it doesn't affect me... maybe give a heads up there, like, "hey maybe they…
"figuring out what to worry about and what to not worry about"
I think that is the "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" skill which is totally necessary to be content while working in an office environment.
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#18asd
I don't think licensure is part of the definition of "engineer"
I didn't get a chance to see the comment before he edited it out, but in some countries (Canada I think?) "engineer" is actually a protected title, requiring licensure.
I don't know what his point was, but as a "software engineer", I sometimes wonder if I should be called a "developer" and let my PE friend keep the "engineer" title, just for clarity's sake.
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#19I don't want to sound an asshole, but I will sound an assholle nevertheless. I was damn happy as one can be at 3.5 years in my career. 10 years in, I feel like my happiness and awesomeness has been slowly consumed by corporate politics, unfair promotions and layoffs, bad work ethics and the such. I still like my work. I really really enjoy it when it's productive, and I still feel amazed to see the green checkmark on…
Some days, I am just like a zombie - I still get work done, but just don't enjoy it. That said, my colleagues are nice and I have some freedom in my work (though the work itself is boring) which is more than what most people say. So I feel guilty complaining about it (I can't easily change jobs).
After working so long, I've come to the conclusion that the best way (and maybe the only way for most people) to enjoy work is just work for self. This is easier said than done.
Those "real cool places" you mention, there are very few of those.
Re: Am I Happy At Work? Analyzing my entire career
#20Really interesting. It must take such discipline to collect this data for 3.5 years.
Trying to answer the question of "does work make me happy?" is much more complex than comparing happiness levels between work and non-work days - they are not independent. How much of your happiness of a non-work day is precisely because it is a day off? An imperfect analogy would be the feeling of enjoying a holiday but also being glad to be home at the end of it.