I'm surfing the net and came across this article by Mercury News Most Workers Hate Their Jobs or Have "Checked Out", Gallup Says

The poll states that those with a college degree are more likely to be running on "auto-pilot" at work.

Perhaps this is just that particular generation?

I know polls only take a snapshot (fuzzy one at that), but thought this would be a good way to start a conversation about how happy in general gifted people are in their chosen field of work.

This is timely, only last night I was wondering out loud if I would ever be satisfied working for someone else (my husband said yes, if I could find someone inspirational, smart, kind, courageous, capable, highly self aware and highly ethical - we agreed that such people no doubt exist but are likely few and far between ... so possibly not!)

I've had a relatively successful career, was a senior executive in the public service by the time I was in my late 20s, have consulted at a senior level for some years etc. I've worked with lots of smart people. But ... It is my intellectual and emotional OEs that get me into trouble. Even among my smart colleagues I rarely find people who are truly curious about the world, who are driven to make difficult choices and have uncomfortable conversations to orchestrate the best possible outcomes. I'm not talking about being an a@&hole, just the opposite, but being morally courageous, kind, speaking up in the face of obviously flawed consensus and so on.

I recently moved sectors and have gone from consulting to 9-5, to work with NGOs where at least my values are often shared. But I find the same thing - some people just as caught up in their egos (resulting a refusal to budge even in the face of sound evidence, refusing to hear those around them and working for them, loosing out on the chance to be better, avoid problems etc) - but this time with the sanction of doing good deeds. People who are brilliant advocates but who can't see that they also need to be good strategists, good leaders and managers if they want to create the best possible outcomes and stretch their limited resources as far as they can. People stuck ideologically rather than being willing to question, to investigate, to call out their own side's hypocrisy.

So yeah ... People being messily, imperfectly human has always been a stumbling block for me in my enjoyment of work!

I don't love mine, but to stick me in a box labeled "disengaged" would be silly. My level of engagement varies from day to day, and even moment to moment, depending on what I'm working on, and/or who I'm working with.

I feel the most engaged when the world is falling apart around me, but if I'm doing a good job those situations are few and far between, so there's a tension there where the better I'm performing, the less fun I'm having. Ho hum.

Also, the organization has a tendency to stop me from working on things I'd really like to. Once I was basically forbidden to start any new projects because I was going to be needed for a hot and heavy one coming down the pike... which didn't arrive for another 6 months.

Oh well. Engaged or bored, they both pay the same.

You're a fire fighter, Dude. Perhaps that is your real calling? (Hypothetically speaking, of course...consulting in your future?)

My career is tolerable. I'm relatively disengaged, although that might have more to do with a complete absence of goals in life at this point.

I picked law out of the "career vending machine" after spending five years in college doing pretty much nothing (technically, I played lots of computer games, read a lot of books, ate a lot of pizza, and slept a lot). I didn't really want to be in college, and I had no interest in engineering, but it was free.

Once I realized that there was no good outcome for me in engineering (particularly since it involved industrial chemicals) I spent three years in law school doing nothing, too (well, I again played a lot of computer games, including in Amy Chua's class), so there's pretty much a black hole in my life from 18 to 25, where I just kind of sat there disengaged from what I was doing.

I doubt that my approach to life is very common though.

In hindsight, I should have taken an active approach to college rather than a passive, "I'll just wait this out until I get a degree", approach.

No, because my top priority in life is my family, and work is just something I do to enable what I do with my family. Consulting requires flipping those priorities.

They're also my main motivator for keeping things boring at work, because usually when the world starts falling apart, it starts at 1:00am on Saturday.

I have some funding to lead a new small organization. I'm pretty happy right now. It's small but we like to think we do meaningful work.


Most of your post describes me very well. I choke on organizational politics. I. am. not. capable. in. that. regard.

I've discovered that I do best when I'm either on my own or working with a small number of other bright, intense people who also get stuff done.

I had a high-paying job from 2008 to 2011. The money was great, but the ossification of my brain was not. I used to dread going to work. I liked my coworkers and was quite happy in that regard. My boss was riding high on his ego and that was a problem, though. So was a large part of the work. By the last few months, I had to force myself to focus on one (large) segment of my work. IMO, employees (and especially gifties) need stimulation to stay happy and productive. It's a tragedy that many or most employers don't see that. It's a double tragedy when employers don't see that very bright people can thrive on problem-solving and on learning something new regularly, and that these traits can really boost an organization. My performance was best when I was spending around a quarter of my time doing new things or solving problems.

I would have been happy to plug away at the dull stuff if I'd been able to continue that way. But stuff got in the way.

This is very generalized, but it gives the basic idea.

I understand that. Family fulfillment vs. professional fulfillment. It's a call to be made individually.

My own husband has given up opportunities for advancement because he knew it would take time away from us. Time he wasn't willing to trade for money or personal interests.

It's true what they say: You can't have everything all the time.

Maybe family first, then personal pursuit, is really the definition of "having it all".

I worked as an economic researcher at a major think tank before a switching into management (strategy) consulting. I'm now a stay-at-home parent pursuing a different grad degree for fun.

The think tank was wonderful when I was allowed to chase down growth opportunities, but the drudgery of my day-to-day work necessitated a change. The structure was flat and there was little opportunity for advancement over the next 5-10 years. When I left, I had automated what was once a full work day into 20 minutes of effort. I met some wonderful, brilliant people there and have remained friends with about a dozen of my former colleagues. I would consider starting a competing organization. Average satisfaction: 7/10.

Management consulting is a fast-paced career, and I felt excited to work because every day involved about 50% learning. However, politics trumps expertise with clients, and often (almost always) our mandate is to be a mouthpiece for management. What is billed as a creative role is really white collar gofering. I also don't relish the aggressive travel schedule, which is quite incompatible with actually knowing your children. It's great for singles or divorcees, of which there are ultimately many. Average satisfaction: 6/10.

My current project is exploring the viability of founding a gifted elementary school for my son. Our gifted programming doesn't begin until 4th grade locally, which is unacceptable. With only 3 years to go until kindergarten, I'm climbing the learning curve. Although it's financially risky and obviously pays considerably below what I'd otherwise earn, it's a short-term project and exciting to think that this work could potentially directly benefit DS! Average satisfaction: 8.5/10.

Work has just as many problems as schools for the gifted in general. Start a job blow people's socks off by mastering it in short order and find out it's drudgery. Work to get great ideas into the company and end up spending all your time on managing the implementation. Take a mid level semi-creative job but can't keep the big picture contained and find you own too much. Politics? I've always just acted like it doesn't exist, and tada it has no effect on me.

And there is research supporting the premise http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...83&uid=63&uid=3739256&sid=21102338898471

Then the chicken and the egg aspect, is the very thing of looking for new things and improving things a key driver to intelligence in the first place?

Let's not even get introversion into the mix.

I like the type of work I do but I absolutely HATE the rat race (early mornings and commuting, etc.) and don't love working a job. Ideally, I wouldn't have to work at all and just get to indulge in all my hobbies all day and spend more time with my kids. The next choice would be to work from home so I can be flexible but I have yet to run across anything to do from home that pays nearly what I make now. I'm not sure I am disciplined enough to work from home, honestly.

Both my husband and I feel like working full time is just a soul-sucking endeavor. We don't see each other enough, we don't travel enough - it's just one Groundhog Day after another. Neither one of us is an ego-driven, climbing the ladder kind of person (both of us are in the public sector without much ladder climbing anyway). We sludge through because we have to.

We are also both introverts as well

"We sludge through because we have to".

My sentiment to a T yesterday from cubicle land! There was a while there I thought I would simply redundancy-away and become part of the floor. And office chit chat.. don't get me started. My job entails a good balance of crisis and boring; there's hardly a meaningful middle. Job satisfaction is riding distant caboose at this point in life. My small family is worth it, every dreary minute - or most.

Now, I *love* my commute and the coworkers are generally enjoyable. Plus, I can often leave the office for whatever reason and come back later, given that we are a self-managing office about half the time.

Commute is about 10 minutes in rush hour (normally meaning mornings when people are going to school or university).

I noticed significant improvement in my career when I no longer had to bill hours, since that drove me absolutely nuts.

I can't say I "love" my job... but I do honestly enjoy what I do. My biggest problem is I spend probably 90% of my "job" not actually doing anything much. That 10% where I actually get to "do what I do" is amazing and the reason I come to work each day.

My current plan is to go to a class next week and get a particular certification that's pretty valuable for my line of work, and then, next year (we are buying a new house this year) look for a new job.

I think that answer necessarily changes throughout the course of each career in our lifetime. I have changed careers a couple of times and my feelings have fluctuated over time. I recently resigned for several different reasons. However, I have to admit that I disliked my employer far more than I dislike my job although the two are necessarily tied somewhat. With more time to comtemplate, I am also realizing that I don't know whether I want to continue on this career path, but one of the obvious issues is the ability to earn a reasonable income doing something else.

DH and I love our jobs. DH is an owner of a creative agency and apart from being too danged busy, if he could just get a minute, he loves it. I'm a journalist and writer and apart from the flashing cursor on an empty screen and my procrastination issues, I love it too. We both get paid to do the things we'd probably be doing for fun anyway, collaborate with like minds, and relate to each other without being competitive. Win!

I like being a public defender. The pay isn't great but it is reasonable. I have a lot of control over my schedule and it is never boring. I often wish I could do more for my clients. Their criminal cases are usually the byproducts of something bigger like addiction, mental illness or a combination of those two.

I love my "job". I'm a SAHM. I have managed to find friends who I would categorize as gifted as well, with whom I have deep enlightening conversations that, I will admit, usually start with how to educate our kids, but often end up with how we are going to solve world problems, ha. A lot of the moms of kids in our GT program are, surprise, gifted themselves.

I worked in banking before kids. I worked for one of the biggest banking operations in the world, and although I didn't much enjoy my personal career (I'm an introvert and it was a high pressure environment with lots of interpersonal interaction), I worked with people on a high intellectual level who were also motivated. It was a stimulating environment and a lot of fun. I loved having an excuse to immerse myself in all the latest political and business news.

Now that I'm home with the kids, though, I wouldn't go back. I do struggle with dealing with the PTA moms, Cub Scouts, and etc. The competition and politics are much worse and more annoying than in the corporate world.

I'm an introvert. I both loved and hated my job as a college professor.

I loved the curriculum development, the research, the grantsmanship, presentations at conferences, writing papers and the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts of teaching. I liked doing my own lab prep, and I LOVED mentoring research students.

I felt rather neutral about committee work and travel. About mountains of grading. Neutral about lab instruction.

I did NOT like lecturing or being inside a classroom. I didn't really like 'face-time' with students even during office hours, but the part that I did NOT like was that cult-of-personality rock show of lecture settings. I do NOT like being in the spotlight like that day after day.


Oddly, I don't mind when it is a one-off presentation. I'm an excellent speaker, and I think well on my feet. I enjoy using those skills, actually. I just don't like the attention focused on ME, and not on my message, if that makes sense. Students are completely fixated on their teachers sometimes. One-on-one wasn't so bad, but I'm not terribly patient with people either too slow or too stubborn to help themselves... and among college students, that's a fair number of them, sadly.

I probably would not go back because of the classroom time. If I could do only curriculum development and grantsmanship, though, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

ha - that's funny - we are the same, only flipped, AvoCado. i run my creative agency (it's just me, though) and my husband's a writer.

i had a VERY hard time picking a field since i'm a) interested in everything and b) learn quickly.

so coming out of high school/going to university was a pretty dark time for me (ALL THE OPTIONS and ALL THE FEELINGS!) but once i aged out of that uh, quarter-life crisis, i realized i'd always have the freedom to change my mind... and i've been happy ever since.

Ha, reverse snap, Doubtfulguest! Now we can be best friends (taking a leaf out of my DD's book, who made friends with a girl at the museum the other day because they had the same shoes )

I'm a creative person who learned early on that I didn't do well in the "stuffed shirt" corporate world. I began working, as many do, in fast-food. I once asked my boss why he wanted me to wipe the counters that I had just wiped down five minutes ago. I'm sure you know his response. Later, I worked in a leasing company and hated the corporate politics and the structure.

While I don't consider myself gifted by the definition, I do know I am talented. My talent lies in the arts. I wanted to be an architect, but my dad (an engineer) told me I didn't have the mathematical ability. That killed me.

I jumped the corporate ship and went to beauty school to be a nail tech. (Fancy words for manicurist.) While I liked the creative nature (sculptured nails), I hated the one-on-one aspect with clients. I'm an introvert. Bad combo. I once had a client complain to my boss that while my work was beautiful, I didn't talk enough and that made her feel uncomfortable!

Oh, and the pay generally sucked.

I later found an apprentice position as a Scientific Glassblower. I was very, VERY happy with that. I could work creatively on my own and talk with others in the shop...or not.

So, I'd say gifted/talented are happy in their chosen careers if it suits various aspects of their personalities, AND also pays the bills!

So cute. DS made friends with another boy while discovering the wonders of paper-making at the Discovery museum.

(Is friend-making really that easy?)

I love my current job. It only took me about 37 years to get to this job, but hey.

I love my job (I work in research, so it's very interesting, intriguing, and sometimes even challenging...not often, but sometimes LOL). There are two areas of difficulty for me: First, that I often have to interact with others. Being very introverted, this is a struggle for me. I really have to push myself hard in this area. Second, I find myself losing focus quite often, mostly at the times where I find myself bored and unchallenged (sound familiar?) Not much I can do to overcome this but to force myself to stay focused as much as possible. It took me about 40 years to get to this place of contentment. I thought I was dumb in high school (even though the school offered my parents a two-grade skip at one point, which they mistakenly turned down...turns out I just over-thought everything...always thought the correct answer COULDN'T be correct because that would be too easy!), and didn't really flourish academically until I was an adult college student and realized, hey, I really am intelligent. Ended up becoming the valedictorian of my college class. If only I could stay a student forever!

http://news.yahoo.com/overeducation-linked-poor-mental-health-123410941.html
'Overeducation' Linked With Poor Mental Health

By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer 1 hour ago
Health

NEW YORK — People with too little education to meet their needs are known to be at increased risk of certain mental health problems, but now a new study suggests that too much education may also have detrimental effects on mental health.

People in the study who were "overeducated" — who had more years of education than their jobs required — were at an increased risk of depression, the researchers said.

The study analyzed information from more than 16,600 employed people ages 25 to 60 in 21 countries in Europe. Researchers measured participants' levels of depression based on their answers to survey questions, and presented their results here Saturday (Aug. 10) at the American Sociological Association meeting.

The reason overeducated people may have an increased risk of mental distress could be because, by definition, they are not challenged by their jobs, and cannot use all of the skills they acquired during their education, said study researcher Piet Bracke, a professor of sociology at Ghent University in Belgium.

They also have jobs with less status and prestige, and tend to have unbalanced support networks — they rely on others for support more often than those people are able to provide it — which may contribute to their depression risk, Bracke told LiveScience.

Previous research in Europe has found that people with lower education levels have about double the risk of having severe and frequent symptoms of depression, compared to people with more education, but the risk varies depending on country.

The new study also found that having many highly educated people in a given country can have detrimental effects on the mental health of all people with college degrees. In countries where more education did not provide significantly more job security or salary, even those with degrees who had jobs that matched their skill level saw declines in their mental health on average, Bracke said.

*********************************************

Here is the paper abstract.

http://www.researchgate.net/publica...shing_mental_health_returns_to_education
Article
Overeducation and depressive symptoms: diminishing mental health returns to education.

Piet Bracke, Elise Pattyn, Olaf von dem Knesebeck
HeDeRa (Health and Demographic Research), Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Sociology of Health & Illness (impact factor: 1.88). 08/2013; DOI:10.1111/1467-9566.12039
Source: PubMed
ABSTRACT In general, well-educated people enjoy better mental health than those with less education. As a result, some wonder whether there are limits to the mental health benefits of education. Inspired by the literature on the expansion of tertiary education, this article explores marginal mental health returns to education and studies the mental health status of overeducated people. To enhance the validity of the findings we use two indicators of educational attainment - years of education and ISCED97 categories - and two objective indicators of overeducation (the realised matches method and the job analyst method) in a sample of the working population of 25 European countries (unweighted sample N = 19,089). Depression is measured using an eight-item version of the CES-D scale. We find diminishing mental health returns to education. In addition, overeducated people report more depression symptoms. Both findings hold irrespective of the indicators used. The results must be interpreted in the light of the enduring expansion of education, as our findings show that the discussion of the relevance of the human capital perspective, and the diploma disease view on the relationship between education and modern society, is not obsolete.

Change "Overeducated" to "Underemployed" and the result is unsurprising.

Wow-- two thoughts, there...

OVER-education????? Seriously?? Is this a THING now??


Secondly, if a population is "over" educated, and this is leading to mental health problems... er...

why are we still encouraging EVERYONE to go to college? Maybe we should be encouraging some of those people to go to McDonald's or WalMart?

I was thinking "underutilized," but yeah.

I agree...especially if the so-called "Overeducated" has the "Underemployed" position that barely helps them to make their student loan obligation!

Exorbitant student loan obligation is depressing. I wonder how many of them were polled on their debt?

Bubble or not?

Easy Credit is Inflating a Massive Student-Loan Bubble

According to this poll, 44% of people like their jobs so much that they would continue working at them even if given $10 million:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/winning-the-lottery-but-keeping-your-job/
Winning the Lottery, but Keeping Your Job
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times
August 16, 2013

On a similar note, in an anonymous online poll, 88% of people reported that they believed that their HR department would hire fake Gallup pollsters to ask questions to probe employee loyalty.

Surely it shows an alarming lack of imagination to keep turning up like a muppet at your 9-5 job if you have several million in the bank? My mind boggles

Agreed, and your use of the word "muppet" just started my day off on the right note. Thanks!

I would imagine that having multiple millions in the bank would induce the same characteristics as what I term, "Short-timer's Syndrome." If you've never had it, I highly recommend it.

I like my job a lot; I have often had jobs where at the beginning I *loved* them, but eventually issues turn up, most jobs are not 'forever' type jobs anyway (thankfully), as far as going to the same office for 20+ years. But I have been in the same industry for about that long (15+), know my stuff, know what I will and won't put up with and come on pretty FRANK in a job interview so landing a job and finding out it completely SUCKS is pretty rare for me nowadays.
Also, I don't have any issues /shyness about discussing the state of things with my mgrs, so that helps a lot in fixing things that are fixable.
(ex: couple jobs back I sat next to a guy who was interesting and funny, but couldn't stop talking even after a 30 minute chat and visual and verbal cues that we ALL need to get to work here at WORK...lol. He was funny, but I did mention the need for a switch of seat and eventually for additional reasons started telecommuting somewhat...so it all worked out).

My job is fairly intellectually challenging (computer systems admin for very large implementation of cots reporting software) and as long as folks don't get offended when I tell them 'no that won't work'...things go pretty well.
I get to do a smattering of writing (technical and 'delicate' emails from time to time) some modest technical oversight to engage my 'management'/planning brain...the folks I work with are great, however, so rarely do I need to spell stuff out to people at a very basic level. Sometimes I work with users, but that is rare too...so it is a LOT of variety, a lot of interesting smart folks, some sensitive - 'yelly' types, but not too many and most of us can roll our eyes when they go off.

One other plus to working in the computer / IT industry, at least when I got rolling, one could completely self-educate in almost any direction (programming, dba, web design, etc), and I suspect that is still somewhat true. My b.a. in fine arts has really paid off.