I'm trying to find statistics on how satisfied people in different
careers are with their jobs. The careers I'm interested in are doctor,
lawyer, software engineer, software engineer manager, and tech
consultant. I want to know, for each of these careers, what percentage
of the people in that line of work say yes when asked "Are you happy
with your job?" or "If you had it to do over again, would you still go
into this line of work?" I've already found lots of essays on what
these jobs are like, but I can't find any hard numbers. Some of the
jobs I listed are fairly specific, so if you can find information on
most of them but not all of them, that's ok.

Hi gremlin-ga,

Let's consider each of these careers individually:

DOCTOR:

"The finding, based on a study of more than 12,000 physicians
representing 33 medical disciplines, found an overwhelming majority of
physicians, more than 70 percent, were 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied'
with their careers, and nearly 20 percent were dissatisfied.
Satisfaction levels varied according to specialty, geographic region,
practice type and country of medical education. Published in the July
22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the study is the first
of its kind to compare levels of career satisfaction across multiple
medical disciplines."

http://news.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/happy_docs.html

LAWYER:

"General Shifts in Satisfaction: The majority of attorneys
(approximately 75%), reported satisfaction in their work. The
remaining 25% reported that they were neutral to very dissatisfied;
moreover, since 1984 there was a 20% reduction in those saying that
they were very satisfied. These percentages were almost duplicated in
the 1995 Career Satisfaction survey, suggesting the reduction in
satisfaction was stable through the 1990s. General satisfaction not
withstanding, the 1990 study concluded that increases in hours worked
and resulting decrease in personal time have become a major problem,
that the status and acceptance of women in general... has not
improved, that the legal profession has in recent years become a less
pleasant place to work, and that, as a result of all these changes,
dissatisfaction has increased"

http://profdev.lp.findlaw.com/column/article1.html

SOFTWARE ENGINEER:

""I don't think there's a lot of [job] satisfaction, but [rather] a
willingness to shut up and put up given the shortage of opportunities
out there," says Maria Schafer, an analyst at Meta Group Inc. in
Stamford, Conn. "

Your decision to pursue a career in IT:

                Very satisfied Satisfied Neither Dissatisfied Very
dissatisfied
Nontechnology (user) company 56% 35% 0% 8% 1% 
High-tech (vendor) company 48% 38% 0% 11% 3% 
Consultants 50% 41% 0% 7% 2% 
Male 53% 36% 0% 9% 2% 
Female 49% 40% 0% 9% 2% 

http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,76144,00.html

There is a lot more information at the link above that segments the
data multiple ways, so its worth taking a look. The table above is
probably better viewed from the URL than here (sorry for the ugly
formatting).

In summary, career satisfaction can be shown as:

Doctors: Over 70% satisfied
Lawyers: 75% satisfied
Software Engineers / Software Engineer Managers: 90% satisfied

I just wanted to note that it is surprising how little data is
available regarding satisfaction levels for IT workers in general.
Most of the data I came across was related to salary satisfaction (not
to say anything about what motivates IT professionals :)). Also, there
were no studies that explicitly seperated Software Engineers from
Software Engineer Managers - all data was grouped under "IT
professional" where the qualifier was the completion of a 4 year
degree.

If you have a problem understanding any of the information above,
please feel free to post a clarification and I will respond promptly
:)

Cheers!

answerguru-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by gremlin-ga on 23 Dec 2002 13:24 PST

Hi answerguru

Thanks for the info. I'd prefer to be able to compare the numbers, and
I'm afraid to do that if they're coming from different studies. Can
you find any studies that compared several of these careers to one
another?

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Clarification of Answer by answerguru-ga on 23 Dec 2002 14:56 PST

Hi again gremlin-ga,

After extensively searching for a single study or resource containing
the information you are looking for, I have concluded that this can
only be obtained through proprietary information which cannot posted
on the Google Answers forum. It seems that any job satisfaction data
freely available comes from a group representing a specific occupation
or set of occupations.

If you are a current student or alumni of a US or Canadian College or
University, you are likely to have access to these resources for free.
Most of these services have a search feature that include journal
articles and books that are not available for viewing on the web.
Otherwise, I've come across a service:

http://www.questia.com/

This service also searches books and journals, and allows you to read
the first page of all results, then if there is something you want you
can access the rest of the article for a fee.

Hope that helps :)

answerguru-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by gremlin-ga on 23 Dec 2002 18:15 PST

I am a US college student. Can you recommend any particular journals
(or specific articles) I might look for?

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Clarification of Answer by answerguru-ga on 23 Dec 2002 18:39 PST

Well the topic that your research is under falls into the realm of
psychology/social psychology so any journal under those subjects has a
possibility of carrying the information you are seeking :)

answerguru-ga