Ask HN: Help finding a challenging, meaningful job?

I am looking for a new career opportunity, and a rather specific one. I already have the job that most young programmers want, with a ridiculous salary and benefits package.

I want something challenging that could change the world. I have had major cancer twice and survived; I simply can't find it in me to glue together mockups for a random cubelet of the Borg. I have 15 years of experience doing many diverse things in the software world.

I want to cure cancer. I want to use creative, out-of-the-box ways to solve the world's biggest problems. I've been told my entire life that I have a unique ability to solve problems that others can't, but I almost never get to use that ability.

I don't know how many years I even have left to live (probably more than 10 :)). I need somebody to take a risk on me, and throw brutally hard problems at me, and see if we can't just make a difference.

Please, if you know of such an opportunity, know of somebody who does, or know me enough that you're willing to create one for us, respond to this post.

Check out http://planet-labs.com/ - we're not curing cancer, but we are launching a ton of satellites to hopefully make earth data far more available and transparent, and have lots of juicy SW challenges

We are looking into cancer research and general cell research from a software engineering perspective. It is very early stages but we have a cooperation with one of the major research teams at Karolinska Institutet.

With we, I mean http://www.muchdifferent.com, a non-profit that make 70% of our business by providing network tools for the video games industry. But we do all kind of stuff and most of it is not public yet. Anyway, when we started this "company" four years ago, it was centered around the same spirit you mentioned; taking talent seriously and solving really hard problems. We still believe in these things but we are a little bit exhausted. Venturing into cancer research has been refreshing and by recruiting the help of like-minded capable people, we hope to improve and be able to inspire our surrounding.

Do you need permission to change the world? If you're so great at solving problems others can't, do it. There's no shortage of problems out there. (Note: I'm trying to encourage you.)

I'd suggest putting an email address somewhere to get more responses.