But this is also hacker news -- where people don't settle on normal work. They're bold enough seek out only meaningful work. Either by starting their own company or joining one where they can make a huge impact without the typical fluff.
thats a bit broad - define meaningful work? - why is it more meaningful to go work at say a YC funded startup - than it is to go work for a larger corporation working in the same space? Lets face it - most startups dont make a huge "impact" - on anything other than the pockets of investors and founders - and that too in a small percentage of the successful cases that get overly romanticized!
He didn't define meaningful, because it's subjective and unique individual, so it might well be working for a larger corporation. His point was that the attitude around HN is to look for meaningful work as opposed to work that just pays the bills.
why cant "just pay the bills" be meaningful? - for more than 70% of the world thats very meaningful. Its also flawed to assume that everyone on HN is someone sitting in the valley with a bunch of job offers.
You wouldn't call it "just paying the bills" if it was meaningful. Meaningful in this context means something that you would do for free. At least, that's how I define it.
That's not to say that 70% of the world's struggle is meaningless. It means survival.
Also, you don't have to be in the valley to wish for meaningful work. I'm not and I do look for work that I enjoy doing.
You got to make up your mind ;) - either he didn´t define meaningful - which makes this entire thread of you´re argument flawed (or diverging from the original topic which was the post by sherm8n) - or he did define it - similar to how you did - in which case your original comment is moot.
That doesn't mean they don't need structure in their daily work. If it wasn't for those kind of people, those who are neither entrepreneurs nor risk-averse worker drones, start-ups wouldn't be able to get any development staff because "less meaningful" usually pays better.
