
Ask HN: How do I find a meaningful software engineering job? - gregorygoc
Currently I&#x27;m working as a Software Engineer in a consulting company whose primary expertise is AWS. My day of work is mainly composed of integrating with AWS REST APIs and &quot;designing&quot; scalable distributed systems. 
I&#x27;m quoting designing, because it&#x27;s really just a matter of composing AWS Services to fit customers needs (provided clients are willing to throw money at cloud services - and most of the times they are).<p>I just feel that&#x27;s not something I would like to double down on. I have always enjoyed digging into lowish level libraries like MapReduce or LevelDB and figuring out how it works with layers of abstraction peeled off. I would love to contribute to such a project and I always envy and look up to Jeff Dean and his opportunity to build such a beautiful low-level software and libraries.<p>Anyway, are there companies which have interesting technical problems to solve and not consider outsourcing them to other vendors? Maybe I should get a job in a company which has a well established product (preferably something used by developers) and has some room for creativity? What are those companies?
======
loph
I'm a late-career software developer. 30+ years in the trenches doing this...

I've done "meaningful" work at companies that treated my like a consumable
resource, and less meaningful work at companies that treated me like a person.
I prefer the latter. My suggestion is don't jump at the first interesting
work, look more for culture and career opportunity. You can find both, those
jobs are not quite as rare as unicorns.

Good luck in your search.

~~~
whorleater
I work at a midstage well funded startup where I'm paid well, treated nicely
by my coworkers, have a great work life balance, and a clear career path for
advancement.

But we do the typical tech wankery bullshit, and the banality of it eats away
at you. Maybe the goal is to get accustomed to this and accept that my job is
better than 99% of the world, but christ if I'm going to spend the next 20-30
years of my life doing this and filling it with hobbies that also don't have
meaningful impact, why even bother.

~~~
finaliteration
> if I'm going to spend the next 20-30 years of my life doing this and filling
> it with hobbies that also don't have meaningful impact, why even bother.

I understand those thoughts and feelings because I have them myself. That
being said, why do you feel like your hobbies also have to be meaningless or
have no impact? Volunteering can be a hobby. So can doing something like
coaching a kids’ sports team (if you like kids) or mentoring someone or
something else along those lines. For me, my job is a way to help my family
and other people who are way less fortunate than I am.

Also, and I know this is a “typical” response around here: Have you considered
the idea that you may be suffering from depression? Most of the time when the,
“why does this shit even matter” feelings hit me it’s because I’m hitting the
depression stage of manic depression/bipolar.

~~~
whorleater
>Volunteering can be a hobby. So can doing something like coaching a kids’
sports team

I do volunteer, I'm active in tutoring underprivileged kids for their
SAT/ACT's, and otherwise help immigrants fill out their N-100 forms. I take
Arabic classes in my spare time, and I fill my free time with various other
hobbies (rock climbing, hiking, etc). And that's great that I have an impact
on a local community, but in the end, why does it matter? Any bozo with two
brain cells to rub together can have an impact on their local community.
Aren't all these hobbies just escapism from the fact that my life is centered
around this 40 hours a week that I spend debugging gevent or rewriting yet
another RPC service?

To me, the acceptance of the reality of "it's extremely unlikely that I'll
anything that has a meaningful impact on a large group of people" is the
saddest thing of all.

~~~
sireat
I call it "Nothing matters, everything matters" dilemma.

Every little thing you do has some sort of meaning (even those hours spent
debugging) if you choose to give it one.

On the other hand nothing really matters on a large enough scale not the
things Bezos, Putin, Musk or any other human does.

Everything is ephemeral as Ecclesiastes already found out.

I think I'd be even more depressed were I put Ozymandias shoes.

~~~
finaliteration
I go the route of Camus and absurdism:

Perhaps nothing matters, but I will carry on anyway because there is still a
chance that something matters.

And really I just want to spite nihilism because it’s self-defeating.

------
accnumnplus1
20+ years in - I'm a data plumber. A plumber might be able to go home and
build some sort of interesting miniature steam engine, but his work week is
connecting pipes. Mine's the the same, just strings and numbers instead of
water. I go home and do some interesting things, but I don't expect I'll ever
do such things at work. Some people are, but not the majority. The colourful
unicorns and thrilling hackathons and exciting conferences are all just a mix
of marketing and untainted youth. Sooner or later they'll find they've been
crudding for 20 years, and strangely the various ways of crudding are no
longer sufficiently novel to make crudding interesting. I try to think of how
bored my dentist must be.

~~~
zapperdapper
haha - brilliant, and spot on!

------
agentultra
In my experience, _meaning_ comes from within: finding interesting problems
that matter to you. If you know what that is then getting there is much
easier.

If you think you really do like LevelDB try writing your own version of it
from scratch. This will test your understanding of the fundamental principles.
It will also test your motivation. Then try to explain to someone else how to
do what you did.

Once you truly understand LevelDB then pick a thorny problem they are working
on, propose a solution, gather feedback, and solve it. Wash, rinse, repeat. A
couple years from now you could be the LevelDB expert you've always wanted to
be.

Then a few years down the road maybe you'll find some key insight that
everyone was missing and write your own database that solves that particular
issue and you'll be the one that someone else is looking up to.

~~~
zapperdapper
His problem though is not with side projects is it? It's the 40 hours cranking
out meaningless crap in the office that's the issue here.

I've had no problem finding meaning in my side projects - the job I do for
money though always seems to degenerate into a daily grind.

~~~
agentultra
I think it does have to do with side projects if that's the avenue OP wants to
take to find meaningful work.

> I would love to contribute to such a project and I always envy and look up
> to Jeff Dean

Instead of being jealous, be the Jeff Dean you want to be!

> Maybe I should get a job in a company which has a well established product
> (preferably something used by developers) and has some room for creativity?

I'm being glib but it's honest advice: one way to get the kind of work you
want is to be the expert people need. Rarely does a team hire someone from
outside with zero knowledge of a critical, low-level system and pay them to
learn it. More often than not they want to hire someone with the skills and
experience they're lacking.

The hard part is finding the motivation. A good chunk of line-of-business
applications are valuable but do not require, "creative solutions." They need
people who understand the problem domain so well that they can translate
business rules into systems and can anticipate users' needs.

The low-level work is a lot more fun and personally satisfying for people but
you have to be pushing the envelope to get it. If you have the personal
motivation to be obsessed with LevelDB for a couple of years before landing
that dream job... success may be much more likely.

------
wskinner
It sounds like you are trying to get meaning from your work. I struggled with
this problem for a long time. I have seen two broad solutions solve it to
varying degrees of success:

1\. Sacrifice earnings and / or stability in favor of meaning. You must be
willing to compromise and you may have to bounce around through a few jobs
until you find something meaningful, or you may have to start your own thing.

2\. Stop looking for meaning in your work, and find it somewhere else. The
people I’ve known who make this work the best are parents. However, I know
some who are not. If you live in the SF Bay Area and work in tech, there is
pressure to make your work your whole life, and that means that if your work
feels meaningless, your life feels meaningless. It’s not the only mode of
living.

~~~
protonimitate
Number 2 is the way to go in my opinion.

There is a large focus on how you make your money in the US. Most people judge
and are judged by the amount of money they make, how they make it, and what
they spend it on. Instead of calling it how it is, people work under the
assumption that doing 'meaningful work' makes up for that obsession.

If you happen to find work the is personally fulfilling, then you are lucky. I
would suggest that instead of chasing the work for fulfillment, find out what
actually makes you fulfilled and then find a way to achieve that.

For me, I am most fulfilled by 1) creating stuff, and 2) being outdoors. While
coding/programming falls under 1, I prefer making studio art (painting). So I
do whatever work I need to do to afford to make art and spend as much free
time outside as possible. Camping, hiking, etc.

If you are fulfilled by helping people, you can donate your time to a local
shelter/habitat for humanity/kids group/etc. If its parenting, then focus on
building a killer family life.

Ultimately, and this is the cynicism in me, life is meaningless - therefore we
are free to create meaning how we see fit.

Trying to shoe-horn the 40 hour+ work week into personal fulfillment is a
hallmark fantasy. How do you keep people coming back and creating profits for
a company, 40+ hours a week? Try to sell them on the idea that they are
'making a difference' and 'changing the world' and will be 'fulfilled'. It's
all smoke and mirrors.

------
Throwaway17724
Sounds like you want a job with meaningful technical depth. If so, I'll tell
you what I would suggest:

1\. Start scoping out companies that do something that you're interested in
and monitor the job openings they have. We can't give you a recommendation
because we don't know what you're interested in. FANG and the other megacorps
offer the greatest breadth and depth for low-level work (Amazon in particular
is still hiring heavily) but they are also the most selective. There are
plenty of mid-sized companies also doing interesting work (Pivotal comes to
mind).

2\. Start shaping up your resume so that you fit the job openings at the
company/companies you're interested in. If that means a bit of resume driven
development, so be it. You can also attempt an indirect approach; if your
expertise lies in the web space, try for a web job there and then do an
internal transfer to the area you want.

3) Start shaping up your skillset to work on low level stuff. Firstly, that
means having your CS basics down pat because when you're working at the low
level, that knowledge is actually neecessary. (This will also help you get
past the dreaded algorithmic interview questions.) Secondly, know the tech or
software package you're interested in working on inside and out; usage and
deployment, pros and cons, where it fits in relative to competing
technologies/software, and at least the basics of the internal architecture.

4) Start applying to the job openings. Don't get discouraged if it takes many
tries; you're making a significant leap.

Good luck!

------
schizoidboy
The title asks about _meaning_ but the first question you ask is about
_interesting_ technical problems. This seems to be a potential discrepancy to
me. Unless you find deep meaning purely in the interesting nature of technical
problems, then it might be worth considering that difference and why that word
is hanging in the title yet seemingly not discussed much in the body of the
question.

------
jclay
Try reaching out to professors or research labs at universities. I work with a
professor who would love to hire more Software Engineers with industry
experience. It is by far the most meaningful and interesting work I've done in
my career.

There are tons of interesting projects going on within academia that
unfortunately don't take advantage of any software engineering best practices.
Many projects are prototypes hacked together in MATLAB and I know in our lab
we are looking to build more robust products that are open source and
extensible for other researchers to use.

~~~
joernl
As someone who works in a central service unit not directly affiliated with
academic research, I was given the chance to touch the lives of probably
generations of students.

Emphasis on "touch", not necessarily "change". Still, it sometimes gives me
goosebumps when walking through the halls and seeing all the people who are
"forced" to use my work.

Pay is not great, but conditions are otherwise excellent.

(Founder/ Dev/ Lead of an electronic exam infrastructure at a large German
university)

------
ddebernardy
If I may suggest a life tip, stop actively looking for meaningful work at
once. Or give your career a pass and work for a non-profit you truly believe
in. Some jobs are meaningful; some are less; some aren't at all.

The more important part actually is to have people who appreciate who you are
and what you do around them. Your boss and colleagues; but also end-users. If
you ever get to meet end-users telling you how you much you've been improving
their lives, _that_ is certifiably fulfilling and meaningful. (If you don't
take it from me, take it from Randy Paush.)

Also, consider building a family at some point. YMMV, but if you're looking
for something meaningful to do in your life, I cannot find words to state how
much more fulfilling making a spouse happy and educating a child is compared
to work.

------
twic
If i understand correctly, you would like to go from being the person who
assembles the magical widgets for the customer, to being the person who makes
the magical widgets in the first place. So, perhaps you could look at the
magical widgets you use, decide which ones you admire the most, and look into
the companies that make them, and their competitors and disruptors.

This isn't guaranteed to succeed. Lots of the widgets come from Amazon, which
is a famously hellish place to work. Redis is great, but you might need to
move to Israel to hack on it. PostgreSQL is amazing, but there isn't a company
behind it, and 2ndQuadrant will probably only hire you to work on it if you're
already a contributor! But there are many other magical widgets out there ...

~~~
anarazel
> PostgreSQL is amazing, but there isn't a company behind it,

There are several companies behind it, and most of them are looking for
people.

> and 2ndQuadrant will probably only hire you to work on it if you're already
> a contributor! But there are many other magical widgets out there ...

You don't need to have any sort of major contributions. It does help to have
some small patch or patches in, that show that a) you enjoy working with the
community with all its quirks b) that you are successful. IIRC the patch that
got me my first job offers to work on PostgreSQL was a day's work or such.

------
westonplatter0
I've felt similar cravings for meaning in work.

What helped me (may be different for you) is to understand my personal values
and places to invest that aligned with those values.

For me, I realized I value \- working to create sustainable/profitable
companies \- quantitative reasoning \- proactive communication \- goal
oriented planning

From there, I worked for couple of small companies but left after I realized
they were chasing billion dollar valuations and/or practicing irrational
product management. Since then, I joined a small data engineering team in a
medium sized cyber security company and started trading stock options on the
side.

Overall, I focused on doing work in environments that aligned with my values.
If there wasn't alignment, I moved on.

Great question mate. Best of luck!

------
usdsgov
Check out the U.S. Digital Service. Software engineers who change lives and
work on really interesting projects.

[https://www.usds.gov/](https://www.usds.gov/)

(I'm biased, see username)

~~~
mariojv
Do you think there will ever be an effort to expand the USDS outside of DC or
even allow remote? It sounds like a great place to work.

Semi-related: have you seen the work the USDS does significantly affected by
political shifts?

~~~
jowiar
Look at Code for America. Also, look at positions at your local governments.
Some city and state governments have been getting things together.

------
mseebach
Meaning is incredibly fickle, certainly not an inherent quality of pretty much
any work.

The work you do today seems to enable a range of businesses to get on with
doing whatever it is they do by letting them leverage some incredibly powerful
technology. That sort of enablement seems like something _I 'd_ find
meaningful. But you're not me, and I'm not you.

If you want to work on more deep technical problems, for the sake of the
technology itself (at the cost of being rather further removed from the real-
world applications your work enables), go look for _that_ , that's perfectly
reasonable. But be careful about assuming that this will necessarily feel more
meaningful.

~~~
zapperdapper
I agree that this "meaning" is a hard thing to put your finger on.

But you know it when you see it.

I think it's maybe not so much about the actual work as how you _feel_ about
the work. I have worked on side projects that are not too dissimilar to the
day job, but have felt far more meaningful to me - it's sometimes hard to
define exactly why though! I used to think it was about helping others, and it
is true that does feel meaningful, but I think there's more to it than that.

------
Joeri
Who is to say interesting technical problems are meaningful? All of the
amazing technology developed at google ultimately is meant to show people ads.
Where is the meaning in that?

The meaning of a thing is derived from its use. Most software projects can be
meaningful when a real effort is made to maximize the benefit to the user.

Maybe what you’re looking for is not meaningful work but interesting work?

~~~
dennisgorelik
> Where is the meaning in that?

Advertising business delivers extremely important value to our society.

1) Adverting helps customers and sellers find each other.

2) Advertising sponsors publisher businesses that otherwise would not be able
to financially support itself.

------
mc
If you find meaning from digging into low level libraries, that's great. Most
people would think of meaning as having shared values with the business you're
working for and it's end users / customers. Prioritize finding end-users who
you genuinely care for and whose lives you want to improve is one way to find
meaning.

------
callesgg
What is meaning?

What caries meaning.

My realization has been that software development has very little intrinsic
meaning to itself, it gains meaning when seen in the contexts of it's
application. You need to find a field where you can apply your skills, that
has more meaning.

------
geofft
The most meaningful work I do is open-source projects in my spare time (or
occasionally at work when open-source projects I'm already interested in align
with my wrkplace's goals). It sounds like you might already be in a position
where you're getting paid well and putting at most 40 hours a week into your
day job - have you looked into saving your mental energy for other projects?

This doesn't work for everyone, of course (I'm young and single so it's easier
for me) but if it's an option for you it seems worth exploring. Even extremely
technically challenging jobs are going to be constrained by either "We need to
solve this incredibly boring problem so a customer can pay us a few million
more" or "We didn't do that enough and now we ran out of funding for the
technically interesting work, sorry".

------
fd5773
Looking back from the wrong end of a happy 30+ year career in software
development, I think the best you can hope for is to do stuff that you find
the most engaging and enjoyable in the moment.

To me, a search for "meaning" in the now is mostly an expression of hope that
you can someday enjoy some long-term retrospective pride in your work. Looking
back at the fun I had 20-30 years ago, it all looks completely trivial (aka
mostly meaningless) compared to where the world is today. I have zero regrets,
but was my career "meaningful"? Not a chance. YMMV, of course.

Keep your arms inside the vehicle and do your best to enjoy the ride while you
still can.

------
icedchai
Meaningful jobs are hard to find.

You're better of working a less meaningful job that pays well, invest that
extra money, and getting out of the industry (or FIREing) as fast as possible.
Then you can work on your own stuff.

~~~
zapperdapper
Cynical as it might sound I actually think this is a good approach. :)

Even if you can't RE you can go contracting and reduce hours dramatically, or
do some other work outside of the industry.

------
startupdiscuss
Meaning is something you create or find, it’s not intrinsic to the activity.

Right now there is someone complaining about doing “boring front end crud
stuff” - an established product - who wants your job.

There is also someone doing “boring detail level stuff” who wants your job.

To put it another way: why is a low level library more meaningful than yours?

~~~
zapperdapper
I think you are right that it's not the work itself that imparts the meaning.

The interesting question is why does some work feel so much more meaningful
than other, similar, work?

If you can figure that out bottle it please and send me some!

~~~
startupdiscuss
Okay, here is my process:

1\. Get a lot of sleep

2\. Drink caffeine

3\. Take a moment to think about the larger social impact of what you do -- it
definitely has some impact

4\. Focus on the problem just ahead of you, get absorbed in how interesting it
is from a certain perspective

And that's it. If you're doing anything remotely technical, these are usually
easy. But this can be done even if you're trading commodity futures.

(Trading commodity futures is an important economic activity, and you're
rewarded for reducing demand when its not needed and increasing demand when it
is needed).

------
slimshady94
I would guess what you really want is to achieve something/create some project
that will make you as respected and well-known as Jeff Dean. Your current day
job is highly technical, but you're not getting the 'fame' or glamour that you
want.

To get to that level of hype (not necessarily technical excellence) you'd have
to find companies on the cutting edge of DB/systems/ML research.

------
crb002
You can do mapreduce on Lambda and S3,
[https://github.com/bcongdon/corral](https://github.com/bcongdon/corral)

Read up on Brendan Gregg's work. Start benchmarking your systems. The
difference between science and fucking around is measurement - paraphrase of
Adam Savage.

------
bootsz
I'm still early-ish in my career as a software engineer but currently I'm
deriving meaning from pursuing mastery of my craft; trying to get better every
day, tackle harder and more advanced problems. For me this pursuit feels
meaningful. Most tech jobs are B.S. and you rarely are "helping" the world in
any real way. But if you are constantly improving and being challenged you
will A) have more fun on a daily basis and feel better about yourself, and B)
be much better prepared to eventually execute significant, meaningful changes
in the world from a position of expertise and experience. Just my personal
outlook / strategy.

~~~
zapperdapper
You will get to a point where that mastery is no longer enough.

~~~
bootsz
I fully expect that but it's not an argument to not pursue it in the first
place. A lot of people (myself included) seem to get stuck early on in life
trying to immediately jump to some grand vision or purpose without figuring
out the more basic stuff first. It's a stepping stone, not solely an end in
itself.

------
diafygi
How about fighting climate change? We are currently transitioning from fossil
fuels to renewables. The problem now isn't the technology, but the scaling.
How do we go from <5% renewables to >90%? Solving that scaling problem
involves a ton of software, and we need all the smart software engineers we
can get.

Previous post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127154)

Also, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until
it's too late... Luckily it's too late!"

------
hirundo
The key is to find the place where interesting technical problems intersect
with the immediate practical needs of the business. Then take the tech to the
boss and sell it. I'm working on such a project now.

If you can't find interesting problems like that, you need to open up, because
they're everywhere, for coders anyway.

If the boss won't buy it, either fire him and get another, or come up with a
more compelling pitch.

------
bsvalley
I worked for different companies including top companies. There's no such
things as "meaningful" work when it comes to a project within a company (the
size doesn't matter). A project is project and has a budget, as a deadline,
involves expensive resources, several layers of management (at least one
layer) looking for status updates, etc.

My best advice for you is to look for creativity outside of your work
environment. Or, to signup for a PhD. Creativity requires no boundaries and
your work environment has tones of boundaries. Does it make sense? Don't waste
your time... pick up a job that requires not too much energy, maximize your
income if you can, then use your free time to build things that matter to YOU.

------
mabbo
> interesting technical problems to solve and not consider outsourcing them to
> other vendors?

> a company which has a well established product (preferably something used by
> developers) and has some room for creativity

> composing AWS Services to fit customers needs

Have you considered AWS? Look, I won't go and defend Amazon's reputation
because there's lots of people who don't like it here. But lots of us do, and
you might. You understand AWS well as a customer of it- there's lots of AWS
dev teams who could use someone with that experience, and they pay well
enough. Lots of stocks, which seem to never stop rising in value.

Bias note: I work in a totally different division of Amazon.

~~~
SpecialistEMT
amazon meaningful? it's like the opposite of what the dude is looking for
here.

------
patrickxie
From my experience in speaking with talented technical people. The greater
part of the satisfaction of a job comes from the peers you work with and the
people you are around with rather than technical solutions.

Have you tried searching for the right company with the right values and
culture that would allow similarly minded people to flourish?

I am not aware of a service that allows you to find companies with interesting
technical problems as of yet so I can't recommend you one.

I do know of keyvalues.com is a service that lets engineers find companies
with the qualities that matter to them.

~~~
zapperdapper
I am old and bitter and twisted so perhaps my opinion is now irrelevant, but I
take most companies' stated values with a pinch of salt. Every company claims
it wants to be diverse, gentle on the environment and kind to employees and
small furry animals. The reality of most tech companies is it's a grind pure
and simple. While they may grant you a day to work with your favourite
charity, the rest of the year is coping with inbox explosions, crisis
management, overwhelm, 60 hour weeks, and unrealistic deadlines!

Told you I was a cynical whatnot! :D

------
alexeiz
Look for better/more efficient ways to do your current tasks. There's likely a
lot of boilerplate you have to create, a lot of process to follow for every
client. Does it have to be this way? Can it be automated or optimized? Maybe
there is an opportunity to apply a new interesting framework or programming
language you always wanted to learn. Maybe there is an opportunity to create a
library that can be useful to you in other projects or to other people in your
company.

------
dennisgorelik
Try to understand that [unless you are doing something immoral or illegal]
high salary means you are helping society (because otherwise society will not
pay your high salary otherwise).

Composing AWS Services to fit customers needs could be quite challenging and
exciting job. In order to gamify this job you can keep track of various
scores: your salary, number of produced configurations, number of
installations, number of users served against your servers etc.

------
mgkimsal
> Anyway, are there companies which have interesting technical problems to
> solve and not consider outsourcing them to other vendors? Maybe I should get
> a job in a company which ... has some room for creativity?

2 points:

1\. I hate getting involved in tech projects where someone got 'creative'.

2\. The "interesting" aspect is definitely in the eye of the beholder - what's
interesting to you may not be interesting to anyone else in that company.

------
suchitpuri
You always have an option of doing something of your own. For me I waited and
switched different jobs for 10 years before realizing that perfect job could
be a myth. I was most satisfied when I was building my own tech but then I am
back in the race after working for myself for 2 years.

------
zupa-hu
I’d be curious to learn more about you. Shoot me a mail, it’s in my profile.

~~~
wordsthatendinq
Same here. DM me on Twitter or email my username at Gmail if you can't use
Twitter

------
xtreak29
Related discussion :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15480233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15480233)

------
drharby
Answering the question while ignoring your wall of text.

For meaning, look into yourself.

For a software job, research roles and prepare for those roles.

For a meaningful job, prepare for a role and look into yourself

------
adamnemecek
The sad truth is that the most meaningful job will be the one you design
yourself. Did you consider quitting your job and doing something on your own?

------
dominotw
would it be worthwhile to get a job at orgs like AWS?

fulfillment is a really 'problem' to solve not just in career but life in
general.

------
mindhash
Have you considered open source work. Check out pachyderm on github. They are
looking for people. Working with an employer that a building core system
softwares is what you may be looking for.

------
slipwalker
why not just dive into open source and contribute your work on a project you
care for ?... just let the day job pay your bills.

------
sjg007
Sounds like you should go work for AWS.

------
yeukhon
Join FAANG and you will get to work on projects that will impact millions of
lives.

~~~
rifung
> Join FAANG and you will get to work on projects that will impact millions of
> lives.

Yes but that doesn't necessarily you will find your work will be meaningful.

I work at Google and of the coworkers I've discussed this with, their
motivation is to retire or support their family. There's a joke inside Google
that you get paid to just move protos.

I worked at AWS. There anyone I talked about this said they worked there
because it was good for their resume.

I work on a very impactful project but don't really find it meaningful; my
immediate work is just a small part of what makes the machine work.
Nevertheless, my work funds my other pursuits which I find meaningful. This
seems to be true of nearly everyone I've talked to no matter where they work.

~~~
onewland
Protos = protobuf messages?

Curious what that joke means

~~~
rifung
Yep exactly

------
Theodores
Try ecommerce. Build online shops for businesses that would otherwise go out
of business. Enable them to trade nationally and internationally. Put the
customer first and put in place excellent procedures and systems for customer
service. Solve real world problems such as excess inventory, waste and getting
products to market first.

This isn't to put shop assistants out of a job, get the website right and
people will 'Google first' before stepping in store.

Ecommerce has only just got going and I got into it after my niche skills in
realtime 3D meant that I only had options in military or computer games. I
threw out all that good stuff I knew and started over, ecommerce being my
choice as I liked retail as a kid and did a fine job of selling bicycles as a
Saturday job. I figured that the 30 mins+ spent advising a customer in store
could be better spent advising many more customers online. Also, nations that
trade don't tend to go to war with each other and being able to trade is what
enabled us to survive the ice ages that finished off the Neanderthals.

You can be picky with who you build websites for, you don't have to be selling
widgets for the fracking industry, you can help sell bicycles instead. It is
that simple.

The problems in ecommerce are not difficult. However, solving simple problems
in ecommerce can have real world benefits. Much to my embarrassment at the
time I once helped build a website for a fabric shop - yep, bits of cloth for
women who make dresses and what not. Not really my bag. However, they now have
no problems with staying solvent, the shop is doing very well and the new
ecommerce department has grown to take on many members of staff.

One thing we did for this fabric shop ('we' I mean 'me' in this instance) is
that we made it so end of roll fabric, e.g. when there is only 0.5m left,
automatically went into the special section of the store called remnants.
There you had to buy the whole remnant albeit with a 10% off incentive. Not
only did this simple bit of code result in actually shifting the left-over-
cruft, it also meant that we had a 'sticky' page, so customers would check in
regularly just to see what was in the remnant section. Once they added that
0.5m scrap to their basket they might also buy some other stuff - lining, all
the other bits of trim etc. Consequently what was once a loss making aspect of
their business became a winner.

I did have to fix a few things on the customer orders - VAT going wrong and
such like, however, in so doing I was quite surprised at how international the
reach was. I also noticed that the Nigerian fabrics that had been 'hoarded'
over the years by the owner were top sellers. Before they had just piled up in
a back room, nobody knowing they were there. But online the demand that was
never imagined was realised.

Most customers were essentially 'makers' and before they were not 'making'.
With our efforts we enabled lots of people in lots of small towns to do things
they were not able to do before. We also sold at a premium, there was no
ambition to put every competitor out of business, however the result was a
range of fabrics that small town shops would not be able to stock in such
depth.

If you look at other aspects such as CO2, the online shopping meant that
customers did not have to drive to the big city and back again to get bits and
pieces. They could get on with what they were doing and order online without
the travel. Being vegetarian I do have opinions on silk, leather, fur and
whatever chemicals are used to process cotton, but on the website we were able
to help people who had similar concerns with 'you may also like' suggestions.
A great amount of colour theory was needed to auto-populate those things and
that was fun to do.

I was almost ashamed to admit I was working on some poxy fabric shop at the
time but looking back on it now I am quite pleased by what was accomplished. I
know real jobs exist thanks to our efforts and the business is definitely
viable in these times when the big names on the High Street are having a hard
time of it. none of the software engineering was 'SpaceX grade' but the
clients were lovely to work with and what we did for them was 'SpaceX grade'
for their industry.

I would be here for quite a while if I was to write up all of the other case
studies, but I think you get the idea. Ecommerce might not sound meaningful in
the way that working for a save-the-world NGO might be, however, 'trade not
aid' is meaningful. Think of the Neanderthals and what makes us humans
special.

------
shawn
Find someplace that challenges you. When you don’t feel challenged, move on.
Rinse and repeat.

I like this question because everyone has their own answer. It all depends
what you want out of life.

