Be aware: this post may make you want to quit your job!
So.. sometimes we give advices to our friends and family and forget to use the same advice for ourselves.
I had a girlfriend who'd work as an accountant and make less than 15k/year (That was back when I was living in Brazil). Believe it or not, for most of people there (At least in the northeast), that's a good salary. There was only one problem: she hated her job.
She was working as an accountant only because her mother thought it would give her a good life (They had someone in their family who made a lot of money as an accountant).
After talking to her, I convinced her to become a Web Designer and I paid for her College. 1 year after that she was making 24k/year as an intern and loving her job. I don't know how much money she is making right now, but I know that she's starter her own company producing Mobile Games and she seems to be really happy.
This small example is something that happens to a lot of people (My sister has a similar problem).
It took a while to realize that I was facing the same problem in my life. I was basically working in projects that I'd receive the jira tickets with the feature to implement (or bug to fix), and after finishing that, I'd move it done and go to the next issue.
A lot of people love doing that, but I am a self proclaimed genius. I love using my creativity to create my own personal projects with a lot of innovation. Why not to do that at work?
I talked to my manager and I started in a different project as front-end. I started to show my ideas and tell them what would be good, according to feedbacks I had from other people, and now, 4 months after, I am living one of the best phase of my career.
Everyone respect my ideas and they actually want me to give them new ideas. I can't believe it took 9 years to start to try to do what I love and what I believe I am really good at.
Bottom line:
- I got really big bonus for incentivizing innovation at work (I did a presentation about two new ideas that I had for the company's product).
- I feel amazing when I come to work.
- I started to trust in myself even more.
This post is about standing up for your dreams. It's really important and I wish I had done that before.
Good luck!