Don't count on work to be meaningful. You might find it, you might not, but so much in the world of work is outside your control. You're more than your job, find meaning elsewhere: in making art, activism, politics, altruism, building something, family, whatever feels meaningful to you. Let your work support that and don't let it define you. Eventually these may align and your passion and your work will become the same but you can't make that happen.
Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#42I'm on the same page as you about advertising, and that really eliminates a lot of companies. But I would encourage you to reconsider your reluctance to work in any part of the healthcare sector. I work for a company that provides medical treatment programs, and I feel great about what I do; there's room to work in health care without being part of the insurance complex. (Although insurers are still how you get paid.)
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#43Try the nonprofit world: http://idealist.org/ I used to say "Nonprofits? They aren't doing anything interesting with tech!!" One day, my wife convinced me to try searching on Idealist just to see if there were any nonprofits doing anything interested with tech. I feel in love with the very first result , got the job, worked my way up the ranks, and am now Chief Product Officer at GlobalGiving.org and I couldn't be ha…
Really? You don't think that any for-profit companies are doing anything meaningful? That's quite a leap. Surely there are physical products in your life that provide a tangible benefit, thereby making the labor behind them "meaningful." I mean things like your car, your house, your clothes. All of which involve tech these days.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#44Try the nonprofit world: http://idealist.org/ I used to say "Nonprofits? They aren't doing anything interesting with tech!!" One day, my wife convinced me to try searching on Idealist just to see if there were any nonprofits doing anything interested with tech. I feel in love with the very first result , got the job, worked my way up the ranks, and am now Chief Product Officer at GlobalGiving.org and I couldn't be ha…
hey wow, i use gg a lot :)
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#45Meaningful hmmm... I started teaching in a high school once a week (cyber) it’s meaningful and really fun ! Try the goverment as well you can really make a difference if you can handle the amazing slow speed
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#46I think transport companies are doing largely beneficial work. They're making cars, airplanes, spacecraft safer and more efficient. This was my former field, and it was great to hear a story of how one customer used our product to rescue family members from a volcano, or how people just found them safe and useful. Like it was clear that what we made actually added enjoyment/utility to their lives. You just don't hear people say things like "thank god for Facebook" like they do about their cars, or a good rice cooker. Agriculture has potential too. FarmLogs is helping farmers grow more efficiently, competing against the goliath Climate Corporation (Monsanto). Weather tech - for startups there's Dark Sky and ClimaCell, of course there are the big players like Weather Channel and NOAA. FlexPort has massive potential in overhauling global freight.
I think in tech, meaningfulness is inversely correlated with sexiness at this point. Just focusing on industries with physical goods will yield markets that have less frivolity and pointlessness than say, social media.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#47Try the nonprofit world: http://idealist.org/ I used to say "Nonprofits? They aren't doing anything interesting with tech!!" One day, my wife convinced me to try searching on Idealist just to see if there were any nonprofits doing anything interested with tech. I feel in love with the very first result , got the job, worked my way up the ranks, and am now Chief Product Officer at GlobalGiving.org and I couldn't be ha…
Really? You don't think that any for-profit companies are doing anything meaningful? That's quite a leap. Surely there are physical products in your life that provide a tangible benefit, thereby making the labor behind them "meaningful." I mean things like your car, your house, your clothes. All of which involve tech these days.
Not the OP, but I have had the experience of working on worthwhile products, but in the context of a preponderately meaningless job. Even if a product has some value, you can find your role demeaned by terrible ethical practices, psychopathic bosses, sales-dominated practises insisting on low quality work, institutional insistence on lying to clients, etc etc. The word 'meaningless' may be a bit over-categorical, but I'd consider it defensible to refer to situations where the meaningless/negative aspects overwhelm the positive.
My experience was that this was the case with all commercial jobs I did. Bearing in mind that only the top 10% or so (which by definition we can't all be included in) have a very wide choice of work.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#48I'd be very surprised if you manage to find a sector with a better "good" vs "corrupted" ratio than health.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#49I work in aviation safety/training. The most meaningful work I've done is developing code for flight simulators, so that pilots can learn how to handle real-world problems. Sometimes that means modeling data from flight recorder boxes, which is a special treat.
Reading through the list of things you don't like, one thing they have in common is being software-only. Hardware products have a huge impact on people's safety and well-being that might inspire you. Aviation, robotics, medicine, even manufacturing.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
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