In a recent phone call with a friend, I was whining that I'm not terribly happy or satisfied with my current job and that I wished I had a more perfect job. He asked, rightly, 'What is the perfect job?'

I thought about that and set about defining it and went on and on and still wasn't much farther away from there I started.

So I thought this would be a good experiment for the 'Tubes.  What would YOU define as a perfect job?

Here's some questions to move the experiment along a little and set some baselines:

  • Customers: Do we need them? Just kidding. What would your ideal customer want from you and how would they help you solve their problem?  How do you select a customer and when do you fire them if need be?
  • Manage the project entirely by yourself? Have an awesome, understanding manager that does all that kind of project/managering-type work for you?
  • Complete freedom to choose toolset, or do you like the challenge of having to work around some kinks in the machine?
  • Collaborate with a team of developers? Fly solo?  If collaborate, all senior, link-minded people? Some mix of skills?  Some senior folks who don't see your way and you have to have debates and challenges with them (sometime this makes you stronger, more efficient).
  • Open source projects (for-profit somehow), or strictly corporate proprietary (show me the money!)
  • Steady flow of smaller projects, or larger, more complex and lengthy projects?
  • Save The World-type projects, or "I don't care, as long as they pay me" projects (do you care about what you're working on, or is it the thrill/challenge of making it work that drives you)?

I'm curious to see what we each individually think would be the ideal and I think it'll be revealing to see how we all answer it.

 

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