Andy Johnson sees work as something that helps define him as a man. That’s quite different than “just a job.”

I had 2 jobs in 2011 and also started a side business as a copywriter. During that time, I interviewed at Facebook and Google, was offered a position at Google (not at Facebook), worked with more than 120 startup companies at a small startup accelerator, consulted inside F500 companies, and learned how to run my own copywriting business. How I define “work” has evolved a lot in the past year.

Men have always defined themselves by the work that they do. This is part of who we are. But in this job market, many men are feeling the pinch of being out of a job and experiencing the challenge of making meaning in their lives without their work. So what does work mean for us, and how does the company we work for play into that?

I think it’s important to separate job from work. In my experience, my work is the contribution that I make to my community, and the world. This is expressed in many ways, including my job, my relationships with my family, to the company that I could start as an entrepreneur. While a job counts as work, work isn’t a job. A job is a specific role, often with a monetary value associated with it. Work is an expression of who a man is, while a job is an expression of what someone is willing to pay him to do.

From the vantage point of straddling my 20s, I am examining what it means to have a career, and evaluating the difference between work and a job.

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In 2012, I joined the hosting startup WP Engine. We are a managed WordPress hosting company. There are 15 employees, and we all share the work to host WordPress sites all over the world. We work from home, we work in the office, we work early in the morning, and we work late at night. We work to get the job done, and I go into the office every day really happy about the work that we’re doing.

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What I’ve noticed is that Startup companies have a different way to define “important” than a large corporation.

When I was a software consultant for F500 companies in 2011, what was important was fairly cut and dry. We wrote requirements for big software projects. My job was to document features and processes in giant software projects for billion-dollar companies. There were only so many options that I had in any given situation, and my job was to follow a linear process that had been developed for me.

There was little room for creativity or innovation. I was also personally disconnected from every other step in the software creation process.

In contrast, since WP Engine didn’t exist 3 years ago, we’re developing our own processes for our jobs as we go along, and we do it in concert with every other member of the startup. Every new person who arrives at the company gets to define a part of the work that they do.

From the beginning, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the leaders of the organization to define my job description. I was told, “There’s always infinite work to do,” and if I wanted to be part of the company, I had the opportunity to create my own job description. I didn’t apply for the job, I defined it and made a case for why that work would grow the company.

The opportunity to define your job and your work is a big reason I love working at a startup, and why I recommend it. If you can handle the weird hours and the stress, a startup is the only place where you have access to a leader, the CEO or founder, who will say that there is “infinite work” to be done, and then allow you to break off a piece of the work for yourself. It’s amazing to be part of creating a new business.

But, perhaps the biggest opportunity you get working at a startup is being able to grow as a man while the company also grows. In order for the company to grow, you have to grow as well.

My work at WP Engine is to be a writer and a blogger for the company, and it took all of 2011 to arrive at the place where I was comfortable defining my work as “being a writer.” And once I had arrived at that place, I was able to create a job for myself that required I be a writer. As WP Engine grows as a startup, I’ll get to grow as a man.

So who are you? What work defines you as a man? Do you get to do that work at your job? If you could design work that would fit your personality, what would it look like?

Maybe joining a startup is a place that will hand you the tools and tell you to go off and build your own job. It could end up being your life’s work.

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photo: betsyweber / flickr