Ask HN: Where do you find your sense of purpose working in the private sector?

I worked in public sector and was constantly bothered by the wastful.spending unaccpuntability, bull#@$ and politics. It was like a British of a fresh air to move to private sector. By comparison way more efficiently way less bull#$#@ and way less politics IMHO.

If I were to work for Meta, my sense of purpose would probably be that we help connect people around the world. Billions of people love and enjoy our product.

If I worked for Uber, I would feel pride how we've helped many people move around especially these without a lot of means.

If I worked for Amazon I'd be proud how we increase productivity across the world.

And on and on...

So for me at least it is the other way around, how can you feel purpose when you know your work can be done xN times more efficient? When you see through empty claims and politics to fight for budget.

I worked at a gaggle of jobs for anywhere from a week up to a year and a half or so before I got my current job, where I've been for over five years now (and I imagine I have at least another two if not more, but that's all logistics). I work for TRD writing software for their NASCAR teams. It's very challenging on and under the surface, great fun, and the company has been very good to me. We have no paying customers and the user base is very small so the pressure is high but not in the way that you get with paying customers. We can set a ton of the expectations and limits of our software, and our few users are generally easy to please. Oh yeah, and we're fully remote with generous expectations for hours. My work/life balance is amazing, even (especially?) compared to my peers in Big Tech Co, some of which left us for them.

On the downsides, the team is small and ownership is often siloed which can ramp up pressure. Also, races happen on Friday thru Sunday typically so those of us working on live software trade some weekdays for weekends (remote work has made this way less of an issue). The pay is above average, but we can't compete with Big Tech Co. in the same state, so retaining ambitious people can be difficult. Finally, we move quickly and often don't really have time to go back and refactor/restructure old projects on official hours, which can make transitions difficult.

Motorsports may not be my passion, and it may have taken awhile to get here, but I'm really quite happy here.

Exactly. And people get to choose whether they buy them or not. So you know if people are spending their hard earned money, they want them.

There are definitely times when governments need to force the people to work collectively and spend tax dollars together, but there are many times when they don't. For instance, I don't drive a car very much and when I do, I'm happy with dirt roads. I would much rather we didn't spend billions on roads and maintenance. Other people will have a different list of seemingly wasted spending.

The great thing about the private sector is you're letting people choose. That's not just a selfish act either because it unlocks their power to guide society. The consumers in a free society are a hive mind. The proles in a centrally-controlled society are just blobs that sit there.

I'm genuinely glad to hear that you've found a mission-driven workplace with a healthy, supportive work culture.

In my experience, I've found that many mission-driven workplaces use the righteousness of the company's purpose to justify pressure tactics paired with low pay. This is a commonly-reported experience at non-profits and even for-profit companies like SpaceX.

I'm now at a crossroads where I'm seriously considering working for companies that don't create particularly useful things for society, but where the culture is better to work at. The ideal would be to find a company with both a good purpose and a positive work culture, but I believe these are hard to find.