Ok my thoughts
1) Pick up a problem that is worth working on. Like healthcare, nature conservation, poverty reduction
2) Find a company that is working on this
3) Talk to them
4) Work with them
Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#62Get married and have children. Make them happy and let them grow to happy adults. Or adopt children who weren't lucky enough to born in a happy family. Start an own company, treat and pay your employees well that they can provide a happy and secure life to their children.
It's almost like you can derive joy outside of the characters you punch into an editor :-)
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#63Try 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.
I think you're the one making a leap here...
Suggesting that non-profits are a good place to look for meaningful work is nowhere close to claiming that for-profits can never do anything meaningful.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#64This might sound cheesy, but first of all: Know yourself.
- What are your values?
- What do you stand for?
- What do you want in work and life?
A design thinking approach, how to find a meaning in your work (and life) is through a simple 3 step process, provided by Burnett and Evans (http://designingyour.life/ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemHh0n19LA):
1. Get curious
2. Talk to people
3. Try stuff
Simple as that...
Nevertheless, I think that work defines us and it becomes our identity (e.g. Joseph the Carpenter, Bob the Builder), but at the same time there is so much more in you than just work. From what you are writing, I could identify what you don’t stand for and don’t want :-) this realization is a good starting point. However, now is the time to get curious, observe, reflect and start choosing your battles wisely, because you might wake up one day and realize that all you have been doing is wasting your time and energy on fights you didn’t actually care about that much… And this is precisely why it helps to know yourself, know your values, what you stand for, your talents and strengths, and maybe even your vision or dreams of how would you like to live in the future, and how would you like the world to look like in the future… Knowing this, I think, would allow you to focus your energy on something that is meaningful for you. Because meaning exists only in your head. So whatever we do, whatever happens in the world or the universe is meaningless per se. The meaning is interpretative. You create and give meaning to whatever you do, or whatever happens to you or in the world.
> but I want to know I'm doing something for a good purpose.
I think, you can never know in advance whether the purpose turns out to be “good” or “bad”, here is a little illustration of that :-) https://www.conures.net/stories/horse.shtml
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#65"Meaningful", by itself, doesn't mean anything, because meaning is entirely subjective.
You will first have to identify what really makes you tick, grinds your gears, revs your engine, and whatever other mechanical analogies seem appropriate. This requires a lot of introspection.
Look around you. What upsets you? What do you consider among the most pressing issues of our time? Once you've done that (think a timescale of weeks, not hours), start hunting for groups at home and abroad who are trying to rectify those things, and who are doing so in ways that you feel are effective.
You can have a diverse set of concerns, which means that finding a relevant project is easier.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#66I 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 safe…
The change from software-only to hardware can have a great impact. That's a very interesting observation of yours.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#67Meaningful work has less to do with the company or job than the person doing it and his/her set of values—“real values” and “good purposes” describe an infinite set of potential jobs/companies. If you cannot find meaningful work, perhaps the problem is that your values are poorly defined. I’d suggest focusing on that part of the equation first.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#68I absolutely second your sentiment - 100%. Of course, this is not going to resonate well in a forum where the majority is invested one way or another in startups producing what I would also refer to as bullshit.
Defining the term bullshit is a bit difficult though in this context. But one definitely can categorize a product or a project into "attempting to improve society and environment" and into "creating incentives to consume more".
I think ML and data science driven political and legal investigations is an interesting field. The only downside is that companies or organisations in those areas usually pay less.
But I would love to do work for Greenpeace or Human Rights Watch or similar projects as opposed to my IT position in ad industry. But it feels odd to voluntarily accept a low wage for that. I guess I will give it a try sooner or later - at least for a couple of months.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#69Our world needs real leaders to start companies that do make a difference and you might very well be one of them. You've got an incredible skillset as a software engineer and a data scientist - I've a similar background as well and I'm interested to see how we can pit our brains to try and solve problems for the needy. A belief I've held is that education has the ability to transform lives. Maybe this is something you'd be interested in as well?
Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?
#70Would you be interested in co-founding a startup with me? I currently work in fashion and feel the same disgust/dissatisfaction with my current business as you've described with yours. I want to build an industry-wide platform which will help clothing companies reduce waste as well as promoting (smaller) companies who are already working to do this.
You want to build or you want your co-founder to build while you do "marketing"?
I'm not a programmer. The last time I did anything technical was about 20 years ago, when I taught myself basic HTML in order to make a fancy Angelfire website for my 13 year-old musings. Needless to say, that is not the career path I followed. That being said, I am willing to learn, but my efforts would probably be best used establishing connections throughout the various companies, factories and contractors who would need to be onboard in order for this to actually work. So yes, I am looking for a technical co-founder, one who actually cares about making a difference in the world. I'm not desperate, my husband is a test manager and has plenty of contacts. I just saw the posters comments and felt that we are in the same mindset, which is crucial for co-founders.