There are many factors involved when determining job satisfaction, some have more effect, some less (most will have a marginal effect). But there are three factors that stand out above all others. You have all three – you are ecstatic, you have none – you’re miserable. I call them the three pillars of job satisfaction and they are:

money – how much you earn

– how much you earn people – who you work with

– who you work with type of work – the type of work you’re doing, i.e. whether or not it is interesting to you

I am probably biasing these somewhat towards software development, but then again I am a software developer, so I hope noone is surprised :). Regardless these should be applicable to just about any type of job, role, position or industry.

Money

This is your salary, bonuses, package etc. It includes how much you earn and all the perks and bonuses that are involved. This is mostly determined by how much you think you’re worth rather than industry averages or some other kind of metric. If you are earning less than what you think you should be, you’re not satisfied. If you earn more, or just enough, you’re happy. Since your sense of how much you’re worth can easily change based on your perception of the world (you read a survey about those same industry averages and realize you’re getting jibbed), your level of satisfaction with this pillar can alter drastically almost overnight.

People

This is all about the kinds of people you work with. Are you friends with everyone at work, do you like spending time with your work mates socially as well as professionally? If you do then you’ll be satisfied with this one. You don’t have to be friends with everyone at your company, but you do have to like everyone that you closely work with. When you only marginally like the people you work with (i.e. you don’t mind them but wouldn’t hang out with them), this pillar will hover on the verge of satisfaction. When you love the people you work with then you’re on a constant buzz when you come to work and “your cup runneth over” (so to speak :)) when it comes to this pillar. Disliking even one of the people you work with closely, can significantly decrease your level of satisfaction here. The upside with this one is, the more people you really like, the more resilient you are to not getting along with someone (i.e. if you’re good mates with everyone, you don’t really mind one idiot). As a consequence this pillar is not as susceptible to sudden major shifts like the Money one is.

Type Of Work

This is all about the kind of work you do. It will differ from industry to industry, but in software development it is all about the kind of technologies you’re using, what kind of stuff you’re learning while doing your work and the kind of impact your work has on the rest of the world. If you work with outdated technology on irrelevant projects and learn nothing new while doing it you will not be happy when it comes to this pillar. If however you get to learn a lot from your work and you think that what you’re doing is significant in some way (i.e. there is some bragging power in the work you’re doing, like working for a project with name recognition or working for a good cause) you’ll be happy. This pillar is usually more prone to slow degradation rather than big shifts. The work you do will usually not change significantly in a short period of time, so if you’re happy to start with you’ll usually be happy for a while. However, as you learn all you can from the work that you do (i.e. get across all the tech) you level of satisfaction may decrease. It will also decrease slowly as the novelty of the work wears off and it becomes routine. Note that if you do consulting work you may go from wildly happy to wildly unhappy about this one almost overnight by switching projects/clients.

How You Feel

When you feel good about all the three pillars at your current place of employment you feel like this:

“I am working with awesome people, doing some really cool stuff and getting paid a craploads to boot. Could this sh*t get any better?” – you’re very happy

When you’re happy with two of the pillars only, you feel like this:

“I am working with awesome people, doing some really cool stuff, I just wish this sh*t paid a little better.” – you’re satisfied

or

“I am working with a bunch of idiots, but at least I am doing some really cool stuff and getting paid a craploads to boot.” – you’re satisfied

or

“I am working with awesome people, the work IS boring and irrelevant, but at least I am getting paid a craploads.” – you’re satisfied

When you’re only happy with one of the pillars you feel like this:

“I am working with awesome people, but the work is boring and irrelevant and I wish this sh*t paid a little better.” – you’re reasonably satisfied (not too bad but could be better)

or

“I am working with a bunch of idiots, the work is boring and irrelevant but at least I am getting getting paid a craploads.” – you’re reasonably satisfied (not too bad but could be better)

or

“I am working with a bunch of idiots, I AM doing some really cool stuff, I just wish this sh*t paid a little better.“- you’re reasonably satisfied (not too bad but could be better)

When you’re not satisfied with any of the pillars you feel like this:

“I am working with a bunch of idiots, the work is boring and irrelevant and I am getting paid next to nothing. This crap is for the birds, I gotta get the hell out!” – you’re very unhappy

Lessons

It is interesting to note that when you can claim to have all three of the pillars you’ll be extremely happy at your place of employment. As soon as one of the pillars is no longer satisfied, you level of happiness takes a significant dive, but you don’t become unhappy, you still feel ok about your situation. You would expect that losing a second pillar would produce another dive in your satisfaction levels and plunge you well into unhappiness, but this is not the case. Loosing a second pillar, doesn’t matter which one, only produces a slight decrease in your level of satisfaction, I believe this is due to our (i.e. humans) natural instinct to stick with what we know.

Humans don’t really like change, so the fact that our general situation remains mostly the same largely makes up for losing a second pillar. Note that if you’re newly entering into a situation where two of the pillars don’t exist, your outlook will be completely different and you will be pretty unhappy from the start. This is once again due to the fact that we don’t like change and since you’re changing circumstances already, it tends to exacerbate the fact that two of the pillars are already lacking. The only thing that can make up for it in this case is if your previous situation was much worse (i.e. all three pillars were missing).

Unscrupulous companies will tend to exploit the fact that you can still be reasonably satisfied with only one of the three major pillars, so it is up to you to watch out for this. You need to recognize the fact that the situation you’re in is crappy and even though it still has some redeeming qualities you have a very good chance of being a lot more satisfied if you change your circumstances now.

Losing a third pillar produces another nose dive in your satisfaction levels and you go from reasonably satisfied to extremely unhappy. This is mostly due to the fact that while we don’t like change, there is only so much we are willing to put up with for the sake of comfort. When all three pillars are taken away, your situation no longer has any major redeeming qualities and while it might take you a little while to realize that moving on is the best option, you will eventually arrive at that conclusion.

And that’s my amateur psychologist analysis :), I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks about the subject. And if you’ve enjoyed reading this don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed, so you don’t miss more of my musings :).

Images by J.W.Photography and Tambako the Jaguar