A Good Job is Not the Same as a Good Career

Whether or not you're happy with your current gig may have a lot to do with whether you view it as just a job or as a career.  That is because the qualifying components for good careers are wildly different than for good jobs.

I once spent months in a position where I could think of nothing but getting out and where my discomfort with the position actually manifested itself into physical pain.   The cause of my intense dissatisfaction, I now realize, was that I viewed the gig not just as a job, but as part of a career I thought I was building (obviously, not the right career). 

But the identifying characteristics of a good career are wildly different than for a good job.



What makes a good job is actually quite simple: co-workers you enjoy and get to interact with often, and an organization whose mission you relate to and support. A good job doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the actual job requirements or tasks.

Let's say you love video games. You like to play video games, to create avatars that look just like you and avatars that look like the girl who broke your heart, then pit them against each other in virtual spaces.

You also like other people who play video games, and like the process of creating video games.  If that's the case, you could probably work for a video game company as, say, a call center representative, and as long as you had time to shoot the breeze with your coworkers and talk about video games you could likely tolerate the negative aspects of your day.

Granted, you might not want to be a call center representative for the next 25 years, but as long as you have some friends at work and a game you can get behind, you'll be pretty happy for a period of time. Depending on how much you like your work friends or the company you work for, you might even look back on the job as one of your favorite (the better the friends, the more nostalgic you'll be).

A good job is valuable; it pays the bills, builds a resume, helps you identify what you like and what you don't. A good career, on the other hand, does all those things and gives you an independent sense of accomplishment and achievement.

A good career is something that transcends workplace friendships. It is elusive. It provides inspiration and satisfaction. A good career is one that not only fills your days but which dovetails into your sense of self and of how the world should work. Whereas good friends and a nice boss can make it easy to wait tables for a few years in college (a job), work friends and shared values are not enough to create a situation worth sticking around long enough to craft into a career. 

My previous position had all the hallmarks of a great job.  The woman in the office next to mine was a longtime friend and I have a lot of respect for the company; I still recommend it to others when they say they are interviewing for a job there.

But I was looking for a great career, and when that is your goal, settling for a good job just won't do.