I think the question is completely wrong ... the question you should be asking is "how do I turn my current job into a unicorn job?". I've done this for almost 30 years and, with the exception of the times I was forced into management roles, I've loved engineering.
The key is that you have to be doing something your employer feels provides value, and ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're enthusiastic about. For me, I try to determine which up-and-coming technologies are worth including in future products. This means I get to play with lots of cool (and sometimes not so cool) technologies - and when my employer asks how something should be done, they "redeem" that knowledge with a list of concrete pros and cons.
Even the author's examples were projects that he was passionate about before he started the unicorn job. One point I definitely agree with is that you have to be a good communicator to first convince your boss you can provide value, and again to deliver that value.
I'll also agree that it might be easier to find a unicorn job in a university setting where things aren't quite so structured. In July of 2012 I landed a job at Penn State as an enterprise software architect/developer ... and it was music to my ears when I found out that my bosses' bosses' boss felt the university need to be more engaged with the open-source community and contribute to more projects.
> ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're enthusiastic about
This depends on being passionate about a how (e.g. a technology, a language, a development methodology) instead of a what. An employer will not frequently let you turn the project of building their food-reviews website into an automatic musical-accompaniment AI.
I worked in a place where the reward for having "good communication skills" was that they did everything the way the guy who had temper tantrums bad enough we had to call the ambulance once wanted.
Some places go from crisis to crisis; yeah, hypothetically you can take a vacation if the project is on track but it was two years late when you joined.
There are places where it makes sense to improve your current job, but it's not realistic. Remember that things like the Obamacare screwup and the Target data breach aren't exceptions, they're business as usual, and if you're part of that kind of culture you are doomed no matter what you do.
The key is that you have to be doing something your employer feels provides value, and ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're enthusiastic about. For me, I try to determine which up-and-coming technologies are worth including in future products. This means I get to play with lots of cool (and sometimes not so cool) technologies - and when my employer asks how something should be done, they "redeem" that knowledge with a list of concrete pros and cons.
Even the author's examples were projects that he was passionate about before he started the unicorn job. One point I definitely agree with is that you have to be a good communicator to first convince your boss you can provide value, and again to deliver that value.
I'll also agree that it might be easier to find a unicorn job in a university setting where things aren't quite so structured. In July of 2012 I landed a job at Penn State as an enterprise software architect/developer ... and it was music to my ears when I found out that my bosses' bosses' boss felt the university need to be more engaged with the open-source community and contribute to more projects.