Doing what you love

Jonathan Ives, Vice-President, Industrial Design Group, Apple
- designs physical objects for beauty, convenience, and luxury
- demonstrates his skill, talents
- revered and respected
- compensated handsomely
- brainstorms solutions with others
- works with professionals at the top of their field
Downside: pressure to meet acceleratingly high standards with each product release (perhaps impossibly high)

Jon Udell, Writer, Analyst, Developer
- plays with emerging internet and programming technologies
- shares good news and ideas with an audience of tens of thousands
- mobile professional - works in a variety of environments
Downside: Pressure to constantly generate fresh, new ideas (even if none come to mind)

Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer, Firefox
- architects a software product used by millions of people
- works with some of the brightest minds in the industry
Downside: Working with a codebase of varying quality; taking responsibility for problems affecting millions of users

If I were choosing between these three roles, I would choose Goodger's role. I love industrial design; I love emerging technologies. But my real love is computer programming.