Yes, it's meaningful. I'm a community manager at @madevuk and @TechNetUK.
Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
61–70 of 86 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#62I work because I must provide for my family. That's enough meaning for me.
That's not "meaningful", is merely necessary.
Is there some reason they're mutually exclusive? Eating is necessary, but it can be meaningful even if the food is simple. Working in order to build your life can also be meaningful.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#63Why would meaningless and 9-5 be synonyms? Why does late evening imply meaning and regular managed schedule lack of it? Why would a company on edge of crash implied more meaning then the stable one? For whatever it is worth, position I have now is a lot of what I was looking for professionally and I can be 9-5. Thankfully, they want output and not butt in seat. It is not saving world and have no such illusions. But m…
I don't think late evening is the alternative. 9-5 links to "corporate" and "corporate" links to "meaningless job" for many reasons: first of all if you work for a company, the profit will come before the interests of your customers. If the company is big and profitable, it will be able to support more and more mechanism to detach its profit from the actual value brought to the customer or society or both. Also the b…
> first of all if you work for a company, the profit will come before the interests of your customers
I don't understand that. That seems largely to be a generalization - I've work for non publicly traded companies, and we live and die and profit based upon the interests of our customers. Also, as we're publicly traded we don't have that impetus for profit - there's been discussions about starting up a pseudo-skunkworks to try and solve problems that may be dead ends without the pressure of needing to produce.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#64Well, 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 10…
It takes collaboration to make a difference, and from another perspective, computer science is worth just the paper it's written on until it's applied in the real world and actually changes something for the better.
You could write a simple program, with 10 year old technology, that changes an entire industry. Imagine if no one applied encryption to eCommerce. Or imagine if no one wrote a messaging application that works over telecommunication protocols.
Famously, the effects of penicillium mould had been known since the 19th century, the mould itself finally identified in 1928. But it wasn't until it was implemented by a team working on the practicalities of mass production that it began helping people, all the way ahead in 1940. Without the research paper we would have nothing, and without the implementors we would have something, but nothing useful.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#65The meaningful aspect of my bootstrapped startup project is I believe that honest, trustworthy products improve the quality of peoples lives. Removing friction on teams so they can build products people can trust is what my tool does, so that's meaningful work to me.
I think bringing trust and honesty to the world is a hugely positive thing. I hope outright honesty can be the norm in digital products one day.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#66I used to think it wasn't. My jobs were, no matter how it was dressed up, trying to earn a massive retailer an extra percent or two on their already massive earnings over doing anything that impacted the consumer positively. Since I started working for myself, I find it meaningful if only because I get to actually BUILD stuff. But after all of the advertising I've done, I'd like for my next full-time job to be a net…
Why do you think you will have another full-time job? Why not pursue working for yourself and building things as a continuous lifestyle?
That's not me trying to be snide or anything, I'm in your exact position right now and whilst I can see a circumstance in which I end up in a full time job again, the goal is to make this the way I engage with the world and make money going forward.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#67Working in Healthcare/Education is pretty rewarding knowing the products we put out are helping people (both improving education for new doctors and improving clinical care). Sometimes working in Healthcare is annoying (Changes are slow and there are legal restrictions everywhere, e.g. any time you mention the word "cloud" the C-level folks yell "but HIPAA!" and refuse to listen), but it's still good to know we're do…
"e.g. any time you mention the word "cloud" the C-level folks yell "but HIPAA!" and refuse to listen"
Same here. Instead of working through the issues management just panics and comes up with some weird approach that delivers less at higher cost and effort.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#68Yes, helping people with chronic medical conditions improve their health and quality of life.
Do you now? Have real data to back this up or is it just a feel good guess? It is easy to deceive oneself that an app or a tracker equals health... better than pen and paper and minor instruction manual. Now if you're actually working on safety critical health devices (say, insulin pump or oxygen meter or maybe a CPAP or perhaps heart monitor), then I hope you're working on cutting the price tag as they're super expe…
> Do you now? Have real data to back this up or is it just a feel good guess?
Well, the program I work for is fully recognized by the CDC.
This thread is about finding your work meaningful, which I do. I'm not sure why you're being so condescending and hostile.
Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#69Re: Ask HN: Is your work meaningful?
#70I work because I must provide for my family. That's enough meaning for me.
That's not "meaningful", is merely necessary.
Well, meaning has scale, and on the human scale, what OP describes is extremely meaningful. On the local scale, raising good kids can do good things for the community. On the county level, things get fuzzy. It's probably better that his family is well looked after and tax money goes to the state. Net positive? Probably.
On a planetary scale? Universal Scale? Of course it doesn't matter, but what would be the point of caring about that except at length? We're not universal scale. I'm not a planet. I'm a human, and I care about other humans and the communities I'm part of.