Big Ambitions Jobs, Courses and How to Get Hired

Working a wage job is not a failure state in Big Ambitions — it is objective three of the main story chain, and it is how the opening is designed to be funded.

Your First Job Is Scripted

Uncle Fred’s objective chain runs in this order:

1. Travel to and rent the apartment at 3rd Street 45, then sleep until your energy is full (roughly 4.5 hours)
2. Buy a Standard Fridge from Square Appliances, place it in your apartment, buy fresh food at El Gato Foods, stock the fridge, and eat
3. Get a job at El Gato Foods and work until you have earned $300

So “how to get a job at El Gato” is not a side quest — it is the third thing the game asks you to do. El Gato Foods is where you already went to buy food, which is why the objective sends you back there.

A practical tip that the community adds to objective two: buy around ten units of fresh food rather than the minimum three. It keeps you fed through the first week without repeated trips, and hunger interacts with energy, especially after the 1.0 change that makes energy drain faster when hunger and happiness are low.

The Job Board

Beyond the scripted first job, the job board is the general-purpose way to find work. It matters at two points in a playthrough: at the very start, when a salary is the only income you have, and much later if you are chasing specific experiences or achievements rather than money.

The efficiency question — whether to keep working a wage job after your first business opens — usually answers itself. Once a store is running, your in-game hours are worth more spent on lease hunting, pricing passes and fit-outs than on an hourly wage.

Manhattan Business School and Courses

The Manhattan Business School exists as a location, and courses and diplomas come up regularly in player questions. Courses are a character-progression system rather than a business one — an investment of in-game time and money against future capability.

One small but genuinely useful 1.0 change: Business School doors are now more visible when walls are hidden. If you tried to find the entrance in an earlier build with hidden walls on and gave up, try again.

Other Ways to Earn Without a Storefront

The game has grown several of these over its Early Access life, and 1.0 added another:

• Taxi rides — there is an achievement chain for completing 10, 50 and 250 of them, so it is a supported activity rather than an oddity
• Speedy Bites deliveries — new in 1.0. You can call for food delivery, or make deliveries yourself for cash
• Working the job board — the standard route

Between them, these mean a broke restart is never a dead end.

Energy, Hunger and Working

Working costs time and energy, and both are systems rather than flavour. The 1.0 model: energy burns faster when hunger and happiness are low, and Hovgaard’s own guidance is to eat a couple of times a day and keep happiness at least half full. Practically, that means:

• Keep the fridge stocked. It is the cheapest fix in the game.
• Use free happiness sources between shifts — walking in the park, reading a book, watching TV.
• Do not stack exercise for happiness. Same-name effects do not stack in strength, only duration, and exercise drains both energy and hunger.

Full detail on the character-needs side is in employee happiness, which covers your own character as well as your staff.

When to Quit

The signal to stop working for someone else is when your business’s net income — after ongoing expenses, not the headline number — covers rent and food with room to reinvest. Check EconoView for the real figure rather than BizMan’s per-business revenue. The path from there is in best first business and how to make money.