As anyone who’s seen my talk on happiness knows, I’ve learned plenty of lessons the hard way. Sometimes it’s hard to know what you truly appreciate until you don’t have it, or to know what you’re missing, until you experience it. So, with that said, I present to you a short list of occupational traits I’ve discovered impact my happiness, with +/- scores. I’ll likely update this list as I think of things.

Side note: I’ve also added a JSON representation of this information (and more) as me.json in this site’s root. I’m still working out the format, but would love to see more people follow suit!

Organization

• Remote-friendly 10
• Trusts employees 10
• Strong leadership 8
• Team culture 7
• Compensation/Benefits 6
• Schedule flexibility 4
• Office location 2
• Invasive contract -8
• Deep hierarchy -10
• Rigid roles -10

Responsibilities

• Problem-solving 10
• Evangelism/speaking 9
• Shipping code 9
• Writing 8
• Leadership 8
• Teaching 7
• Research 5
• Meetings -7
• Management -8
• On-call -9
• Busy work -10