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Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

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Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#11

Post by maxxxxx »

My company produces medical devices that help a lot of people enormously, including my girlfriend. Her life was unbearable before we got the device. In addition she probably got the device only because I knew about it through work.

So the work should be meaningful but somehow it doesn't feel that way to me. Between bad technical decisions, bureaucracy and a lot of schedule pressure I don't like my job. I think I would be happier working on a less meaningful product but in a more technically interesting and challenging environment.

There are other people who get a total kick out of helping people but somehow this doesn't work for me.

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#12

Post by projectramo »

Yes it is.

We build a machine that shaves of pennies from donations to orphanages and funnels them directly into hedge funds.

To do so we have to build a neural network! and in Tensorflow no less!

And here is the real kicker: I rewrote the interface in Haskell. If that isn't meaningful, I don't know what is!

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#13

Post by akuji1993 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #11

My company produces medical devices that help a lot of people enormously, including my girlfriend. Her life was unbearable before we got the device. In addition she probably got the device only because I knew about it through work. So the work should be meaningful but somehow it doesn't feel that way to me. Between bad technical decisions, bureaucracy and a lot of schedule pressure I don't like my job. I think I woul…

Maybe you can also still work in the same field but for a different company? Because it doesn't sound like you're mostly missing a challenge or interesting problems, it sounds more like your management / senior staff isn't making the right decisions for you / in your opinion..

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#15

Post by jmkni »

projectramo wrote: post #12

Yes it is. We build a machine that shaves of pennies from donations to orphanages and funnels them directly into hedge funds. To do so we have to build a neural network! and in Tensorflow no less! And here is the real kicker: I rewrote the interface in Haskell. If that isn't meaningful, I don't know what is!

Cool, what kind of fossil fuel does the machine run on?

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#16

Post by _sword »

Nope. I work in equity research and am lucky enough to be on the team that I'm on, but it doesn't seem meaningful or worthwhile. I generate investment ideas through industry, company-specific, and technology-specific research and then publish these ideas in reports for my client base. Most of my job is then debating investors on specific technology investments or trends.

Sell-side finance (e.g. investment bank) is broadly declining in my view. Companies are cutting many positions, technology is enabling downsizing while making certain areas more efficient, and there's fee compression across the board causing many public market facing roles to see substantial revenue declines.

The trade that existed in the 2000's of trading substantial hours of your life for $$$ has broadly disappeared. Instead positions tend to offer compensation that's similar to many tech roles, but requiring substantially more hours.

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#17

Post by fecak »

After 20 years in recruiting for tech startups I decided to launch a resume writing and career coaching business. In recruiting I was often helping candidates to fix their resumes and teaching them how to get jobs, but I was working on behalf of companies and my incentives weren't always to the benefit of candidates.

Now I focus 100% on helping people get jobs and build careers. Much of my coaching work involves convincing people that they are qualified for roles they felt were beyond their reach, or helping write a resume that will open doors that had previously been closed.

Sometimes my clients come back and send me a thank you note about how they have been offered their dream job or a raise that will change the lives of their family. Sometimes I just see a LinkedIn notification that shows a past client took a new job.

Being a resume writer is an odd career choice. It's not glamorous like writing novels or screenplays. But I can point to thousands of people that have benefitted from my work. That feels meaningful to me.

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#18

Post by AstralStorm »

tpaschalis wrote: post #10

Well, it's matter of perspective. It's not very possible that in 200 years or so, people are going to remember and study my work. That's reserved for the Newtons and the Gausses of the world, and even then, they are acknowledged from a tiny percentage of the world's population. But I'm very grateful to work in a setting where I can solve exciting problems, get to collaborate and learn from really smart and passionate…

Unless you're a really good mathematician (I count hardcore CS as math) your work will likely not bring any advancement because it is low hanging fruit.

Sometimes you get lucky like Apple, but the hard work was done by inventor guys like Kendall or a selection of electrical engineers in 80s.

In short, if it's not academia, it's probably 10 years outdated already if not more... or just a minor tweak. (Like high end 10Gbit routing, hardly life changing. Or yet another ANN architecture.)

Companies do not want a gamble and deal with science, they want instant gratification. (Except the few super rich like Google and Microsoft having small but great real research teams.)

Yes, it is a high bar, but a big difference between feel-good and actually useful and life changing technologies.

Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?

#20

Post by ahje »

chris_wot wrote: post #9

Well, I can pay for my mortgage and I can keep food on the table for my kids. Yep!

This. My job provides the financial means of doing what I want to in my spare time.

I'm not going to be a hypocrite and try to find deeper meaning in a job which basically means I'm making money for the business so that the shareholders can get their cut.

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