Pillars of job

I recently decided to ask my friends, whether they knew anyone who was content with their job. To my surprise almost all of them had no answers, whereas some just blabbed my name (quite flattering, not sure about correctness). This made me think, on what it takes for a job to be good enough for people. Do people have too high standards and expect too much from their jobs, or the job industry itself is bad or people are just inherently dissatisfied.

I tried summarising what I felt would comprise in a good job in 4 broad categories. Some might have overlap.

Compensation

Money, Stabilty, benefits, equity/ownership, job title and status

Development

Growth, Learning Curve, Creativity/Innovation, mentorship & opportunities

Enjoyment

Culture, team dynamics, impact, recognition, ownership, creative freedom, company vision alignment

Workload

Stress, work-life balance, flexibility, clarity of expectations

I think any other metric that I might have missed would fall under these 4 categories.

Is it even possible to have all these in one job? I don't know. Plenty of people have been saying, pick a job whether pays well (Compensation) or you learn plenty (Development). Both better, if neither then leave. Recently GenZ have been focusing on WLB (Workload). And overall as per my observation, these 3 pillars are very frequently discussed. And maybe the most important pillar in my opinion, Enjoyment, is often overlooked. Probably because it is the hardest to measure. There are plenty of articles and books that focus on it though.

Also most people align compensation and development with enjoyment, which I think is good as well. They are in way delaying gratification. More work is often a culture thing and is celebrated at plenty of places. I too agree with the POV of that you should work extremely hard sometimes in your life (20s seem ideal) to reap the compound benefits later on.

Let's assume that the ideal job does not exist. Even if it does exist, we do not recognize it.

Sometimes you don't realize how good the old days were until they are gone.

Everyone would value different pillars at different stages of their lives. You should go for the pillars that you value the most and plan your life to compensate for the other pillars you care about. Most important thing here as well is to know what you want and to go get it. This self actualization is the hardest part. And it might be constantly changing as well.

The only definition of smart that resonates with me is: the abilty to get what you actually want out of life. Source

How freelancers and business owners have it?

I think if they do it right (& for the right reasons) the only pillar they would ever worry about is the compensation. The compensation pillar is too big of hurdle for most people to get over.