The Sims 4 Get to Work: the complete guide to the three active careers

Eleven years after its initial release, The Sims 4: Get to Work remains the only expansion in the game to offer three fully active careers, where you follow your Sim hour by hour at their workplace. Doctor, detective, or scientist: each job immerses the player in a completely different atmosphere and pace, with its own settings, daily tasks, and progression. Here's our complete guide to getting the most out of the three careers, not forgetting the hidden planet Sixam, the aliens, and the very first trading system introduced in the series.

Why Get to Work remains a one-of-a-kind expansion

Released in 2015, Get to Work launched The Sims 4's "expansion pack" format, but more importantly, it introduced a brand-new mechanic: the ability to follow your Sim during their workday. Whereas other careers play out off-camera (your Sim disappears and then comes back in the evening more tired and better paid), the three active careers are played live. You direct your Sim at their workstation, manage the day's objectives, interact with coworkers, take breaks, and earn — or lose — your promotion based on what you actually accomplished between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Each career has its own priority skills, unique setting, specialized equipment, and progression goals. Good news for players in a hurry: following your Sim to work is never mandatory. You can let the day pass just like in a regular career. But then you'll miss out on the bulk of the paid content, and especially the animations written specifically for the expansion.

The Doctor career: diagnose, operate, deliver babies

The most "human" of the three careers is played at the Medical Center, a large pre-built hospital whose name is randomly generated in your save ("Mustard Clinic," "Willow Creek General Hospital," etc.). Your Sim starts out as a simple intern and climbs the ten levels by developing two key skills: Handiness and Logic.

The ten levels of the Doctor career

A typical day at the Medical Center

In the early levels, you spend a lot of time cleaning up puddles, doing chores, and running errands. Nothing very glamorous, but every completed task fills the daily performance bar. Starting at level 4, the real medical work begins: examining ears and eyes, taking temperatures, doing throat swabs, sending a patient to the chemical analyzer, for X-rays, or onto the treadmill.

The trickiest part remains the diagnosis. Each patient presents several symptoms (peeling skin, sneezing, headache, swollen limb…) that point to a specific illness. By clicking on "diagnose", you choose the pathology from a long list. A wrong diagnosis costs a few performance points and annoys the patient; a correct diagnosis lets you administer the appropriate treatment, often in the form of an injection or a pill. At the highest levels, your Sim can perform surgical operations in the operating room, and above all deliver babies, content that is absolutely exclusive to Get to Work.

Our tips for the Doctor career

• Raise your Logic at home, on a chess set, before even starting the career: it's what makes diagnoses more reliable.
• Handiness is used to repair the ward's equipment. A handy intern always earns their promotions faster than an excellent doctor who leaves the coffee machine broken.
• Don't forget the meal break at the vending machine: hunger makes performance plummet.

The Detective career: from the police station to the crime scene

Called "Detective" in the French client but presented by Electronic Arts as the Detective career, this path sends your Sim to the police station, located right across from the Hospital in the world of Willow Creek. Two skills dominate: Fitness and Logic. Good physical condition helps chase down uncooperative suspects, while logic is essential for piecing together clues.

The ten rungs of the Detective career

Solving a case step by step

Unlike the doctor, the detective almost never stays at their desk. Each day begins at the police station's case board, where your Sim chooses an ongoing investigation. Next, it's off to the crime scene, in a generic neighborhood generated for the occasion. On site, you photograph clues, take fingerprints, interview witnesses, and can even search through trash cans to dig up an incriminating object.

Back at the police station, each clue goes through the chemical analyzer or the database to cross-reference fingerprints. Testimonies allow you to put together a composite sketch of the suspect. Once the profile is complete, your Sim issues an arrest warrant, which makes the criminal appear at the police station. The interrogation is a dialogue mini-game: intimidation, empathy, lying… Find the right approach and you get the confession. Otherwise, you'll have to release the suspect and go back to investigating, which costs precious time.

Our tips for the Detective career

• Put your Sim in a focused mindset before heading to work: analyses at the police station directly benefit from it.
• Never neglect photographing the clues at the crime scene: incomplete case reports reduce performance.
• If you fail an interrogation, save beforehand: the randomness of the answers can completely ruin your day.

The Scientist career: invent, serumize, explore

The most original — and the geekiest — of the three careers takes place at the laboratory, a large complex set in the middle of a desert. Your Sim develops four skills there: Handiness, Logic, Rocket Science and Gardening. It's also the career that unlocks, at its highest levels, access to the hidden planet Sixam.

The ten levels of the Scientist career

Making discoveries and crafting serums

At the laboratory, the main task is called "make a discovery". In practice, your Sim has to go to an invention station and start a research session: you choose a lead, solve a small logic puzzle, and earn a discovery point. Two discoveries are enough at level 1, but you'll need eighteen by level 9. Discoveries gradually unlock the game's six major inventions: the SimRay, the freeze ray, the satellite dish, the cloning machine, the SIM5-4 pod, and above all the wormhole generator, the key to Sixam.

Alongside the inventions, the career offers about fifteen serums to brew at the sequencer. The most useful ones for everyday life: the Miracle Serum which cures all illnesses (perfect to combine with the family doctor), the Calming Serum which boosts mood, the Rose Perfume which makes you irresistible when flirting, and the famous Grim Reaper's Friend, capable of resurrecting a ghost Sim. On the flip side, the Contaminated Serum and Wild Strength are mostly good for playing mad scientist on your coworkers, which doesn't exactly help you climb the ranks.

Our tips for the Scientist career

• Invest early in Handiness: inventions break down often, and repairing them gives a big performance bonus.
• Never craft a serum without testing its effect on a non-played colleague first: some of them are downright dangerous.
• Grow plasma and rare plants in the lab's garden plot: they're used in several serum recipes.

Sixam: the hidden planet and the aliens

Get to Work brought back aliens into the series, which had been absent since The Sims 3 Seasons. These blue-skinned NPCs normally live on Sixam ("Maxis" spelled backwards, a nod to the studio), a planet only accessible via the level 10 Science career's wormhole generator, or by fitting a rocket with a wormhole module.

On Sixam, the scenery is crystalline, low-poly, and gorgeous. There, your Sim can collect unique alien metals and crystals, meet curious inhabitants, and bring back trophies unavailable anywhere else. Back on Earth, aliens also show up as potential colleagues at the lab or as neighbors disguised as regular Sims, with a mind-reading and memory-altering power that's quite fun to play around with.

Opening a shop at Magnolia Promenade

Beyond the active careers, Get to Work also introduces the very first retail system ever offered in the series. Head to Magnolia Promenade, a small side world made up of three pre-built shops and one empty lot. There, you create the shop you want: bakery, clothing store, art gallery, bookshop… then you hire employees, set prices, manage stock, and welcome customers live.

Retail mode plays exactly like an active career: your Sim physically goes to the location, opens the store, stocks the shelves, sells items, and deals with running out of stock. It's an excellent complement to the Scientist career — sell your serums in your shop — or to Baking, the cooking skill this expansion adds to the game.

Our tips for making the most of active work days

• Don't stack two active careers in the same household: following two Sims at the same time is unmanageable. Spread them across two separate families.
• Always use the "Go Home" button instead of letting the day pass on its own: leaving the workplace properly applies the performance rewards.
• Vacation days and days off also apply to active careers: save them for aspiration goals that require free time.
• Positive moods (focused, playful, confident) boost performance gains. Set up a nice bathroom and a high-end bedroom at home to maximize your morning moodlets.

An expansion that defined a decade of Sims

Eleven years later, Get to Work still shows up in most lists of the best Sims 4 expansion packs, and for good reason: it's the only one that really tried to break the "off-screen commute" loop. The three active careers each offer around ten hours of very different content, plus the retail mode and the Sixam getaway for replayability. If you've never tried following your Sim into the operating room, putting together a composite sketch at the police station, or sniffing a calming serum, now's the time to dive in — preferably during the EA App sales that come around every quarter.