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Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#71

Post by pcmaffey »

throwawaybs wrote: post #19
jey wrote: post #14

> I'm also totally sick of the ideological crap at lots of startups. I don't want to have to drink the kool-aid. I don't mean to threadjack, but what are some examples of this?

The typical is we are the best and we are changing the world for the better. If you make critical comments, you get pulled aside and told that criticism is frowned upon. The general expectation that employees be true believers while the founders are just in it for the money. The ideological belief that entrepreneurship is the solution to the world's ills. Basically, I'd say the TED ideology. Look, tech is amazing, an…

The irony here is that many of the responses in this thread are pushing you to start your own thing and change the world in a way you care about... which is pretty much the origin of these cult mentalities you're trying to get away from.

It's a real tough challenge to go from strong founding values and vision to then having to promote those values in a way that keeps your business alive. In fact, it's antithetical to the dominant business model of the internet.

My suggestion: focus first on the business model you want to operate with. How do you want to exchange with the world? As a non-profit? As a VC funded startup? A private company bootstrapped on revenue? A large public company? A consultancy? Making royalties on IP? Investing? A small local business?

IMO you'll find more relevant people and opportunities that share your value system this way.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#72

Post by kevinconroy »

Freeboots wrote: post #44
kevinconroy wrote: post #6

Try 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 :)

Thanks! Always open if you have any suggestions or bug reports :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#73

Post by kevinconroy »

JshWright wrote: post #63
nether wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. I'm sure there are plenty of for-profits doing meaningful stuff too. Given OP's original question, seemed like he was missing non-profit from his search.

I'd suggest searching (non-profit + meaningful for-profit).

Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#74

Post by brightsize »

JSONwebtoken wrote: post #54
SycamoreSavage wrote: post #52

Would 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"?

Oh $deity I can't tell you how many times I've run into this. Usually the "marketing" person has a comfortable 9-5 job and wants to do the startup work in the spare time available when not attending to work or family responsibilities. The technical co-founder, in contrast, will naturally be expected to work 40-60 hrs/wk (at least) for no salary, just some kind of usually-not-well-defined "equity", and not much of it, simply because she didn't produce The Idea.

Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#75

Post by NumberCruncher »

bdcravens wrote: post #62
NumberCruncher wrote: post #59

Get 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 :-)

Just imagine you are sitting on a lonely island till the end of your life, alone. What would you do? Punching characters into the editor or listening to the birds and waterfalls?

Does punching characters into the editor make more sense if you are not sitting on a lonely island alone, as long as it pays the bills? Do your friends, spouse, children, humanity like you less, if you hit the wrong characters?

Re: Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?

#77

Post by pkalinowski »

throwawaybs wrote: post #9
Top19 wrote: post #3

One suggestion might be to just work 35 hours a week at a business you find “passable”. The other 35 hours can be dedicated to something that really makes a difference. In fact it’s really hard to find a job that does serious good. Good agencies throughout the world are so low on funds they need volunteers, not workers for the time being. Since you hate advertising, a not-immediately similar path might be anti-corrup…

I'd be up for volunteering. I'm not quite sure how to find a good group to volunteer for. Occrp looks interesting, but it looks working there involves going to Kosovo. Open-emr looks potentially interesting, but I'm not sure how much I care about hospitals being able to make more money. I'm not convinced electronic medical record are actually a good idea.

This is the project I like, open source hospital software for poor countries: http://hospitalrun.io/

I see it that way that you can make healthcare more efficient with low risk of fraud (there is no money involved directly here).

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