Good Job / Bad Job 💻
A way to describe a dream job. Also, my reading list and news from the past week.
♻️ Good Job / Bad Job
This article was originally posted on Medium, here.
I was recently asked to describe my dream job. To my surprise, I realized my answer doesn’t involve a particular technology or industry. Instead, I found myself emphasizing the aspects of work that I enjoy. I expect these priorities will change over time, but this exercise was useful for me to understand what I value in a career today.
A good job is challenging. A good job requires a multi-disciplinary skill set and encourages collaborative behavior. A bad job is repetitive, narrowly focused, and discourages sharing information.
A good job allows for open communication and promotes concise and clear writing at all levels. A bad job involves posturing, pointless meetings, and bureaucracy.
A good job rewards those who develop solutions to problems that are not found in the back of the textbook. A bad job rewards those who are most effective at publicizing their results, regardless of actual impact.
A good job has a broad, clear vision that is applicable to the job description and daily work. A bad job is not well defined and often contradicts with the vision (if it exists at all).
A good job provides competitive compensation, but more importantly provides the ability to invest in oneself through continued learning. A bad job focuses on “perks” or uses salary as the single bargaining chip to gain talent.
A good job encourages the freedom to pursue self-interests that are directionally aligned with the job. A bad job prioritizes immediate needs versus long term productivity gain.
A good job promotes an inclusive team environment regardless of race, religion, gender, or political orientation. A bad job screens candidates based on self-imposed criteria and referrals from someone whom you owe a favor.
A good job provides mentorship at each career stage, and understands that the skillsets needed to manage are not the same needed to be in the trenches. A bad job categorizes people as “rockstars” or “duds” and does not consider how a rockstar may become a dud without appropriate training.
A good job is something you talk about after you leave your desk. A bad job is also something you talk about after you leave your desk, but with more colorful language.
A good job understands work life balance, but does not need to emphasize the point because of the shared vision. A bad job does not consider work life balance, and employees roll their eyes when you suggest taking PTO.
A good job encourages you to bring your family and significant other to the office. A bad job does not consider your family or significant other.
A good job can become a bad job without continued consideration.
📚 Reading
Facebook is facing an antitrust lawsuit that spans 8 states and the Capitol. A separate, but similarly targeted suit involving Google is expected to be announced on Monday. Link.
Apple is hosting a special event this Tuesday that is anticipated to announce the details of the new iPhone. Link.
New photos of the surface of Venus provide clues to its atmospheric composition. Link.
A German scientific outpost has gone missing in the Baltic sea. The environmental observatory was located in a restricted zone and disappeared shortly after a Russian naval exercise involving their northern fleet. Link.
There is a wire encompassing Manhattan called an “eruv” that acts as a symbolic boundary for members of the Jewish faith. Under Jewish law on the Sabbath, members of the faith are not allowed to carry objects within a public domain. When the eruv is intact, the area inside is not considered public. Link.
Google has been fined $170M for collecting personal information of children through their YouTube platform. This is a sticky subject and not well defined: part of the recommendation feature that pushes content also tries to predict age of the user. In this case, the fine is punishing Google for not erring on the side of avoiding data collection. It’s a grey area, but this will establish precedent. Link.
Facebook is launching a competition to detect deepfakes — realistic videos generated from still images of real people and overlaid onto existing videos. Deepfakes have been widely used this year in misinformation campaigns, and the technology to produce them is quickly decreasing in cost and complexity to implement. Link.
💎 Quote Of The Week
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
Seneca
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