The Pursuit of Happyness

A colleague happened to remark today - if the work's good, the boss is bad, and if the boss is good, the work happens to be bad! The discussion we were having was a typical workplace discussion about work, bosses, projects and so on. But her remark got me thinking. It's true with most of us, isn't it? As professionals, it seems to be our destiny that we can only have one thing - either a good boss or good work. Seems like a case of 'You can't have your cake and eat it too'!! And so, it seems like while we can pursue happiness, we can't (always) expect to actually lay our hands on it. If you ask my take on this colleague's remark, I would say that of the two I would choose good work. Bosses, good or bad, are people, at the end of the day... Like you and me.... It takes all kinds of people to make a world! And bad bosses just end up teaching you about managing difficult people. Now in a corporate environment, bad work is bound to come your way at some point of time, but doing good work is finally what gets you noticed finally. Not only in your organization, but outside as well. And however philosophically one might look at it (no work is truly bad, there's a bright side to everything, blah blah), there's no denying that having work that's not proving to be any value addition over a long period of time, is going to harm chances of further growth. To sign off, how do you know if you're really doing 'good' work? Or what's the definition of good work? A friend of mine had this to say: "If you open the Times Ascent, and see the (kind of) work you are doing figuring in the work profiles, you're doing good work!"... Neat, I would say...