Ask HN: Jobs with Meaning?

I, like many of you, work on a project that doesn't really advance humankind. I work on a software product in a niche, within a niche, within a niche, to help a subset of large corporations process data a little bit more effectively during meetings.

My compensation is beyond what I ever imagined making 10 years ago. I work remotely, my job is not demanding, I have time during my day to do other things. Stress is also low.

I just feel like it's kind of a waste of my existence though. I can contribute to things, I can help society, etc - but I kind of feel like I have these golden handcuffs. Why leave when my situation is so good, despite doing basically nothing useful?

Recently listened to this podcast called "13 minutes to the moon". A really interesting dive in to the lives and efforts of the engineers that made the Apollo missions possible. They really did something with their engineering skills. Programmers were a huge part in the mission success.

I however, don't really feel like the mission I'm helping currently is meaningful. And it seems like most programming jobs are the same.

Not really sure what I'm asking. I guess a simple TLDR would be -

Are there any coding jobs with actual meaning out there? Is it possible to take those on without sacrificing my income to I had a large interest in aerospace contracting. It just seems like the paycut will be >50%, and I will not be able to work remotely anymore.

/endrant

"I work on a software product in a niche, within a niche, within a niche, to help a subset of large corporations process data a little bit more effectively during meetings."

Even a small increase in efficiency in a large company can be worth a lot of money, and that money will be spread across employees, customers, and shareholders. So your work benefits people, even if it does so indirectly. In a simple economy where everyone is a farmer or produces goods for farmers, it's easy to understand what people are contributing. In an advanced economy this is more difficult to understand, but the specialization of an advanced economy creates much higher living standards.

You can find jobs that have great tangible impact on the world and society. You just cant get paid 200K a year doing that. Unless you're in defence industry, but I get the feeling that kinetic impact was not what you were looking for.

Problem with programmer recruitment is, imho, that Programmers have been sold this ideal that they are "Rockstars" that swoop in like super heros to save companies. Which is just not what programmers are today. Programmers, are the new industrial workers.

Better paid in most cases though.

I think if you have a lot of downtime, you should see if your company has a philanthropic department, and then volunteer to do help out thought it.

Salesforce where I work, has a pro bono projects portal for any NGO's that have Salesforce and need volunteers to help out. Sure you will not find complicated large projects, but the impact of just making a custom dashboard, report, or help create a mail campaign has actual real world impact.

I think the meaning comes from within you. I talk all the time with people who have worked a string of prestigious jobs and they say things like "I realized I can't have any impact working at a FAANG" which may be true but that attitude seems to be constant even when the job is not content.

Tell us more, what do you mean? If it was a dream job why did you feel such a longing?