Somewhere in 2021 someone claimed to live the IT dream. Working on the best projects, working whenever he wanted, earning more money than he could spend and working towards a pension within 10 years. While I mostly laughed about these claims, it did made me think about my own dream job. What makes a job a dream job? Is my current job a dream job? How do I see myself in 10 years from now?
Let me first answer the first question. What makes a dream job? I don’t think there is a single answer. If you’d ask 10 people who work in IT (or work in general) what their dream job is, you will get 10 different answers for sure. To me it’s very clear. I want to be part of a collective, but a collective in which I can have impact. I want to be an entrepreneur, but with a focus on adding value to an organisation. I want to have all the freedom possible to add that value, and work on goals that can make a difference to the organisation. I want to work with people who are smarter than myself so I can learn every day. I value a culture in which a mistake is used as a tool to become a better person instead of being fired. People excel outside the comfort zone, in a place called the challenge zone. I value an organisation that lets you securely work in the challenge zone. Instead of throwing you in front of a bunch of lions unprepared, getting all the support to confront the lions to me is essential. I thrive from changes and love to work with people who are passionate about the things they do. I love to have a laugh every now and then with people who share the same interest and have conversations about the nerdy side of things. And since life sometimes gives lemons, I’d value an employer who recognises this and offers all the help and freedom possible to handle these lemons.
The answer to the second question is quite simple: yes, my current job is a dream job, simply because of the answer to the first question. Is it always awesome? Surely not, but that’s essential to know why it’s a dream job. Barney Stinson (from How I met your mother) always claimed that his life was legendary, but if every day is legendary, no day is legendary. You need those challenging moments in a job to realise when you are excelling in the things you do and that your job really is legen… wait for it…. DARY! If you are always working inside your comfort zone, you might get bored because all days are legendary.
Now the final question is a hard one to answer. I do have my ambitions, but from a job perspective (especially in IT) it’s very hard to plan 10 years ahead. It might even be hard to plan 5 years ahead. Why even bother? One of my colleagues (Francisco) quite often uses a sailboat and the trip to an island as a metaphor. The island is your goal, but it isn’t really possible to sail to the island in a straight line, due to different wind conditions and angles from where the wind is coming from. Now, such a trip might take months or years before you arrive, and the fun thing here is the actual journey. During the journey you learn how to sail. Along the way you arrive at different islands and those visits might change your goals because of new things you learn. You might even change your end destination because you find out along the way that there is a far more beautiful island. The moral of this story is that I simply love the journey and that to me the journey is more important than reaching a destination.
The reason why I am writing this blogpost, is because I think everyone deserves a dream job. A job that makes you smile every day, gives you a lot of energy, and makes you proud for the things you do. A job that doesn’t feel like a job, but more like paid hobby. A job that allows you to become the best version of yourself. A job that offers a lot of different destinations and different journeys to those destinations. Not to spoil the beans here, but I believe that we at ITQ can offer you that job.
If there is one thing that I learned in the past years, it’s that if something sounds too good to be true, it quite often is. Hitting your pension in 10 years from now sounds good, but if you really love your job, why would you? Honestly, I would probably get bored as &(#$*$. Working whenever and wherever you want also sounds attractive, but when you have a family, having a bit of structure (maybe even a lot of structure) is essential.
Coming back to that dream job we offer. ITQ is one of those unique employers that doesn’t put people in boxes. We don’t believe in boxes. We hire people as EUC consultants simply because it sounds weird to be hired as Passionate Technical Guru of Digital Workspace Solutions, built by VMware and enhanced by me as a huge ITQ Nerd, who loves to work with challenging customers to design and build the most awesome use cases, who watches Star Wars and Marvel Movies/Series and has a thing for Asian Food . Plus, such a title doesn’t fit into an email signature. The bottom line is that we can help you define your own dream job, defining your destination and help you in your journey. Perfect examples of such ITQers (besides myself) are Jeffrey Kusters (who started as a consultant and now is our CTO) or Dennis Hoegen Dijkhof (who started as a consultant as well, and is now our managing director for ITQ Netherlands). But also people like Marco van Baggum and Sjors Robroek are perfect examples. They started as a consultant at ITQ, but now have their dream jobs at VMware. All because of how ITQ offers a great journey to a personal destination.
If you are interested in joining the vessel, determining your own destination and let us help you on your journey to Awesome Island (that’s my take on Richard Branson’s Necker Island), feel free to reach out (through the contact form or by dropping me an email (johan AT itq.nl). You can also find me on twitter or linkedIn. I’m looking forward hearing from you!
