Some people frequently ask me why i spend so much time working for free outside of my job. Other people frequently ask me why i don’t go to work for a bigger company because “they pay better”. The title of this post is the answer to both questions. I don’t really think money is all that important in my life right now. I’m not rich or anything, and i don’t make huge amounts of money. I do make enough to live comfortably, right now. As long as i can live comfortably, i don’t really feel the need or urge to make more money or to “better myself” as the recruiters like to call it. What is far more important to me is what i get to do, instead of how much i get for doing it. If i have the choice between a high paying job which would increase the number of unwanted situations i have to deal with, or a lower paying job which would enable me to work on interesting things, then i wouldn’t even consider it a choice right now. I’d go for the most interesting one without a doubt, provided of course, that i can resume living comfortably.
I often cringe when i see people leaving a good job (or turning it down) just because they can make a bit more somewhere else. They never seem to realize that more money often means a lot more crap you have to deal with or put up with. Want to work for a big company that offers big paychecks? Fine, go ahead, but don’t expect it to be a wonderful ride. There’s a reason why those companies have a lot of money, and it’s because everything is about the money. You hate the fact that you have to do something that you’re not comfortable with? Too bad, suck it up and do it because that’s how the company gets paid. Granted, every job has moments and situations like that but it’s all about how frequently they occur. And those kinds of situations and moments are just a natural side effect of working for a large company. In those places, people are typically there for the job security, the money or the status. It invariably leads to an environment where the actual quality of the work is never someone’s primary focus. Well, at least not somebody important enough to actually make a difference, that is. I’ve worked in an environment like that, and i would never want go back to something like that. I get miserable when i have to be in an environment like that for more than a short while, so what good will that extra money be for me then? Not a whole lot.
As for working for free outside of my job, it’s pretty much the same thing. I could start working on some commercial products which i could sell, but that isn’t always a lot of fun either. You’d have to spend a lot of time polishing things and that’s almost always boring, frustrating work. Not exactly what i’d want to do at night or during my weekends. You’d also have to deal with issues that customers of your software have, and that can be a very annoying and frustrating experience as well. But you’d have to do it and you’d have to do a good job of it no matter how little you feel like doing it at that time because hey, it’s a paying customer. It also increases your no-fun-workload because you have to deal with some legal issues when you’re releasing commercial software. Are you sure you can sell your software without getting raped by the financial authorities in the country you live in? Are you sure you can’t get sued for your software in some way? If you want to deal with all of that, go ahead. I won’t.
Instead, outside of work i prefer to work on whatever i want to work on, whenever i want to work. If i feel like writing some blog posts, i’ll write some blog posts. If i feel like writing some code, i’ll write some code. If i don’t feel like working, there is no pressure whatsoever for me to do anything. I’m pretty much fully in charge of what i do and when i do it. I get to learn from what i do, and i get to help other people who also want to learn. All of that is worth a lot more to me than making some extra money.