List below is not from any research – some are my own experience and more of it has been learned from a video about “Life at Google” – Watch it here.
The satisfaction of a IT professional or any employee depends on following factors:
1. Many people use their product.
Developer uses a huge energy, time and patience to build a app. If the app is sold but no body uses it, no cares about it – this makes devolper very sad.
Not all developer works for bucks only. Learning that so many people uses our app is a nice feeling.
2. People use it everyday.
If you app is being used by people on day to day basis, learning such news is a great experience for developers. Being able to a help makes them very satisfied.
3. Their work is not bounded in small sphere – it has new opportunity & wider scope.
If developers think himself that their work is bounded and there’s no door to new experiment or new target, the job becomes a chore.
“Yes, we can go to web, we may even go to mobile and ….” makes job interesting for Desktop programmers.
Knowing there’s some more beyond your current horizon and see chance to cross there, is a hope and that hope make feel satisfied.
4. Learning, gaining knowledge, redefining what you know.
Doing same thing again and again is more fun. Learning new things, or just learning better ways of doing same things is great for employee and the company.
This way, the employee becomes for productive and effective and company gathers more profit.
Even, for same problem, different approaches can be taken to solve – learning other way around is like finding the missing pieces of puzzle.
5. Relax enviroment + freedom in choosing task.
Creativity requires space and time. It requies brainstorming and interaction. Having a deadline is good for managing project schedule but at the same time, little bit freedom in work, can bring refreshment and productivity at work.
Being able to pick up calls from home, getting status update of friends from facebook, or just some walk around can be really helpful.
Google lets its employee to freely decide what they want to do in 20% of total time.
6. Demo + Creating new ideas, get it launched and get feedback.
Sharing great ideas with other is another factor. Due to various reason, company do not provide infrastructure to launch the crazy ideas of employees.
But if the idea is useful and adds value to company reputation, chance should be given.
Like in Google, ‘Poeple Finding’ app was initiative of googlers. When idea become big enough to publicize, company made it official. Getting chance to show your talents and getting appreciated is a beautiful experience.
7. Work is visible, understandle by other.
Some of the IT work is not understandable by laymen. Google employees believes that when they explain their work to mother, brother or neighbour, they get it. There’s one saying that
“if something can be made understood to your grandmother, you understand it well.” Simple mistakes takes hours and days to figure out. Developer often has to work on tiny issues for too long time. So, their hard work is not visible by others. This is
really sad part. Knowing other understand what you do and appreciate its value boost job satisfaction.
8. challange, great stuffs to make it even better.
Job needs to be mix of both challanges and familiarity (50-50). If you know everything of it and there’s no chance to learn new things, it gets boring.
At the same time, if the job is heavily new and you lack confidence, have much fear and uncertainity, then it is too risky for company. Doing challanging work and getting success in that requires deep thinking, creativity and collaboration. It only helps employee to push their limits but also makes the job interesting. Remember “If Some thing becomes routine, creativity is lost.”
9. Great vision of company.
You have your own goal of life, similarly every company has. If, to some extent, both goal gets intersected, it makes you feel better, make you feel you are contributing. When company has a very valuable mission, you feel you are a part of it and contributing towards a greater goal. Getting inspired by own people and own company has positive impact on your job satisfaction.
This list is not exhausted. I’d like yours comment and addition as well.
