[1/2] Designing Your Work Life (Designing a dream job) (Career column)

I recently read a book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans of Stanford that created the course. Designing Your Life. In their book, the authors transfer the principles of design thinking to the field of careers, where the key idea is the thesis that the dream job is not “found” – it is designed. So if you don’t like something in your current job, you don’t have to quit – it’s often enough to refram and design the role differently:)

TL;DR for engineers looks something like this.

• **Think like design.**p and use the cycle: understand → generate options → prototype → implement. - Bias to actionLess “consider” and more small experiments. - ReframingFormulate the minimum feasible problem instead of the general “everything is bad.” - Good enough for nowStop waiting for the ideal, improve 1–2 things now. Distinguish between gravity problems and real problems. The first cannot be changed. (That's how the world works.) - you have to accept it and get around it, but the second can be solved for real. Happiness at work = balance A-R- C.: autonomy (autonomy), relatedness (linkage), competence (competence)

The authors propose to replace the decision "I resign" with 4 strategy - Re‑enlist Rethinking the “why” in your current role (Update goals/metrics/feedback). - Remodel Reorganize responsibilities: remove the sand, add energy-fichi, take a mini-project. - Relocate Change the team/product within the company. - Reinvent Change tracks in the same organization (For example, from Backend → Platform/SRE/ML).

How this approach of authors is related to the familiar things in IT It's like refactoring the legacies of systems: first small safe steps, then architectural changes.

• Prototi work is like a little a/b test behind a ficheflag. User interviews are reminiscent of the authors’ suggested conversations with people from target teams/roles (informative) A product backlog resembles a list of hypotheses that increase your value and satisfaction.

In continuation I'm telling you how all of these tips can look real and fit into a month.

#Career #Software #Design