This may seem like I'm being dismissive but I don't want to work anywhere. I work because I have bills that need to be paid. I don't derive enjoyment from making other people wealthy. I legitimately cannot think of such a state as enjoying work nor enjoying working at any given company in particular.
Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't mind answering.
Neither do I, but within the scope that I have bills that need to be paid and thus need to work, there are organizations where that work is enjoyable, others where it's acceptable and even more where it would be unpleasant.
I want to not dread going to work, so I only entertain offers from outfits where the job and its environment appear enjoyable. "Acceptable" is below the bar I set unless I somehow end up desperate for money.
The attitude in my case wasn't cultivated. It stems from the fact that I like what I do and I'm very good at it.
Consider, thoroughly, the hypothetical lottery jackpot. What is it you would choose to do, pursue, aim for, if money were no object and you had nothing except your inner volition to drive you. Would you spend your days reading, exploring philosophy and knowledge? Or would you travel and see the world you've yet to traverse? Maybe you're an individual striving toward community and you want to focus on family, friendship, charity. Maybe a bit of everything?
Design, intentionally, the dream you would live if you could. My friend often responds cynically, saying if he is asked about his dream job he would be a space explorer like some Marvel movie. I hear him as flippant and he's clear he thinks it's a dumb idealistic pontificating exercise. . I go toward the path of okay, what would it take to BE that thing or pursue it...
If you can visualize and reason your way to how something might happen, you can reverse engineer it. You can think of it like chess. Position yourself with strength, understand openings midgame and endgame, but know there are many, many, undiscovered lines left in many positions. Now expand from 64,64 squares and so many moves to the infinite variability in Life. You have levers and positions you can exploit and transpose.
Circumstances will always have a hand as will pure luck, fate, or Higher Power, but... you have immense power to craft your reality and I mean this in no woo terms. You change your thoughts, your words, your actions and most crucially, your influence and environment.
I want to respond and thank you for taking the time to reply. I want to put that here first because what I am about to say will seem flippant.
But I literally want to do nothing. I don't want to do anything - I want to not exist. Life is suffering. I derive no enjoyment from anything. I just make other people happy and wealthy and then go home and suffer until I go back to work and suffer.
Hello, I work in the games industry. You basically need some self-fulfillment to not burn out, be it in designing/implementing gameplay features, digging deep into some graphics/hardware level instructions to optimize, or simply working alongside non-programmers (artists, sound designers, VA's, writers, etc. Very diverse environment) to get something beyond a technical project finished.
How to cultivate that is pretty straightforward. I like games, and I can tolerate making games by leveraging my existing skills. I want to make my own games one day, but I need more financial stability for that. Of course, I can't say I feel as passionate about making someone else's game as I would my own, but industry gives me experience, lets me meet other kinds of talent, and lets me prepare savings for that day I try to do my own thing. That's how I keep motivation going.
I'll grant you, "enjoying work" is rarely, if ever, a thing. The choice might come down to "less bad", but there's still a range of work situations. By "companies you'd like to work with" I mean companies shipping products or services that resonate with you, using tech your interested in, and development processes you don't hate. I don't like working in fintech, for example, so that's a place I wouldn't interview unless I was in need of money. Others might really love the idea of working as staff at academic institutions, and be will to accept less money in exchange for other things.
Do you, and if so how did you cultivate that? If you don't mind answering.