What Is Your Dream Job?

I know a little kid who was the son of a family friend and who grew up to become a smart young man and high school valedictorian. Jonathan said in his valedictory address something insightful: "Work does not necessarily make you happy but it may give you the means to be happy."

Don't put all your eggs in one basket, one dream job, one relationship. Treat your job as a good friend, don't become too emotionally involved with it. Don't just get a paycheck from your job - if you do, you are underpaid. Do things outside of work. If you work with computers all day and you don't do other stuff that does not involve computers, consider new hobbies that pertain to interests. For example, if you like sexy iPhone app UIs like on http://wellplacedpixels.com, consider going to an art gallery with friends to see what kind of art is out there and why you like certain pieces of art.

Please watch this inspiring video on youtube: Did You Know 3.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8

1:10 : The US Department of Labor estimates that today's learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38

1:16 : 1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year. 1 in 2 has been there less than five years

I changed jobs regularly about every 18 months for the first 10 years of my career, for mainly the same reasons as you do. What I found was that I would start a new job with a lot of hopeful optimism, immediately making huge amounts of progress, impressing my co-workers and managers with my hard work and new and improved approaches to problem solving. After 90% of the low hanging fruit improvements had been implemented, the last 10% would be hung up by red tape, unflexible co-workers, bad management, and the general suckitude that almost every company has.

I would get frustrated and start looking for greener pastures. After doing this for the first several years, I realized this approach was better as a contractor than a full time employee. I did contracting for several more years, until I found a company that just "sucked less" than the others I'd worked for.

One thing you will learn as you have more experience: All companies suck to work for (unless you started it yourself). Some just suck less than others. Try to find one that you can at least tolerate the suckage. When I get bummed out about idiotic co-workers, management that doesn't know what the hell they're doing (example: no backup generators for a data center with $millions in equipment), I just close my eyes and try to meditate on the six figure salary and five figure annual bonus. That usually makes me forget how much it might suck at the time. Oh, and the fact that I still get to play architect and design some cool systems.

Good luck!

I like that quote. Also, sometimes, what you want is not what you need. (that's also my philosophy when meeting with clients: even when they "know" what they want, I try to find out what they really need)

I think I've got my dream job, but three years ago I said the same thing about the last job, and three years prior I said the same thing about the job before that, so your guess is as good as mine what my dream job will be three years from now.