What I want in a job

What I want in a job

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As part of my series of what the heck should I do with my career oh my goodness too many decisions multi-part post hosted here on My Financial Journey I figured it would help the one or two readers who try to stumble through this horrible rant of babbling nonsense on which job I should take to know what is truly important to me in a job.

To summarize the most important thing to me when I am looking for a job is what is going to be best for my family. This can have many different implications ranging from:

  • Money to support my family
  • Money to support me becoming financially independent as soon as possible to be able to spend more time with my family
  • Working a reasonable work week so that I can see my family on a regular basis
  • Finding a place that is relatively close to my home so that I don’t spend a ton of extra time driving to and from work every day
    • Note: I don’t want to move from the city I am in right now as I want my children to attend this school system.

To be honest if everything above was accomplished by be shoveling poop at the local waste management plant I would honestly be ok with that in the near future. I certainly want job satisfation and to grow and use the talents and skills I have been blessed with and have worked so hard to fine tune, but if being the person who licks the envelopes at ACME corp will give me the freedom and financial growth I need to accomplish the above goals sign me up. Problem is with this logic is if Acme corp replaces me with a sponge my career prospects don’t look good if all I’ve done for the last 5 years is lick envelopes so having a meaningful job of some sort is somewhat necessary for the future security of being able to achieve those goals above.

So in an ideal situation I would like to be further advancing my career both technically and professionally….I got an MBA you know. To be honest even though I have never discussed this on my blog, but career wise in 10-15 years depending upon how my nest egg grows I really plan on finding something that will allow me even more freedom and time to spend with my family and something I truly enjoy. Whether this means going back to school, getting a teaching degree, and teaching kids computer and business stuff (my wife is a teacher – both having summers off would be awesome) and coaching sports (another thing I really want to do in my life) or skipping the becoming a teacher thing and finding a technical consulting gig or becoming a free-lance programmer who can schedule the summers off to be with my wife I want to be able to have the opportunity to do this. So knowing this is my overall goal in life at this point climbing the corporate ladder may or may not fit into this strategy.

Note this post is part of a series