If you are looking for challenge at work, you probably seek challenge in other parts of your life as well. Change and adventure are what motivate you and you tend to:
- look for exciting, and even anxiety-producing situations
- be confident in your abilities to tackle the problems
- enjoy the success (and relief) of a challenge well-handled
- get bored with routine
- want to be rewarded and recognized individually for your contributions to the project
- manage your own career by seeking out challenging projects and acquiring new skills
- want to understand the problem and any constraints and then want to be left to invent a solution
You need a place with a lot of smart people (who you admire) and an everchanging project mix. Startups and small companies don't scare you as long as the work is interesting and the people are intelligent. You'll even take a salary cut to work on the most interesting stuff, if there is a bonus at the end of a successful project. Big companies with their boring methodologies and rigid structures aren't for you.
Look for companies with a Task Culture or Academic Culture, but you might fit in with a Person Culture, too.
