[MathYouF]

How many companies are building something worth believing in?

The ones who are (few) defintiely don't worry about this problem as much. If a company is having problems with it it's probably that their estimation of their own moral self worth is what's incorrect, not the attitude of their employees.

[gavinray]

So, so many. The world is full of them.

I work at my current job because I used their OSS tool at a past position and felt like I had my life changed. Then wanted to share it with every other developer.

So I got in contact with them and told them how I felt, and now that's what I do.

If I ever feel like the tool doesn't represent the same quality as when I started or the company values have changed, welp, then it's quittin' time and on to the next thing I go I suppose. But I don't see that happening -- or at least I really hope so.

Nobody's integrity and happiness should be compromised or up for sale, unless that's what they want.

I've slept under bridges and I'll go back to it again before I sell myself out, tell lies, or pretend to be someone I'm not.

Here's some examples of things I think are genuinely valuable and jobs I would do:

- Software for addiction treatment centers and rehabilitation

- Bioinformatics and genomics for disease, especially making information accessible to regular people. Genomics for fitness/sports performance.

- Software reform in partnership with state/governmental agencies for criminal justice

- Anything to do with LLVM. LLVM is fucking cool.

- GraalVM is fucking cool.

- Music software -- production (DAW's), plugins, education software to make music theory accessible

- Software to make learning programming accessible. Stuff like repl.it, Codesandbox, Scrimba

I could go on and on. The world has so many serious issues, and interesting problems/challenges to work on -- just pick one you like and relentlessly hunt companies + people down + study (if you need to, to learn the domain) until you get a job.

If I can claw myself out of poverty, drug-addiction, and homelessness as a highschool dropout, into a white-collar career then I'm pretty sure most people with less disadvantaged life scenarios can too.

---

Not to pull the cliche, stupid "by-your-bootstraps" argument. But look, humans are driven and intelligent beings that drive the force of history.

Don't tell me that there's no company in the world doing something you believe in, and you can't get a job doing what you like, etc.

That's really pessimistic and defeatist.

[Apocryphon]

> Here's some examples of things I think are genuinely valuable and jobs I would do: - Software for addiction treatment centers and rehabilitation

Where's the money in that? San Francisco can't even scrounge enough funding and will to effectively treat its own addiction-afflicted citizens and homeless population, the local VCs are likely even less interested in that line of work.

> - Bioinformatics and genomics for disease, especially making information accessible to regular people. Genomics for fitness/sports performance.

23AndMe, Verily, etc. are in this big industry. Of course, a considerable of this is going to lead to people's medical data being resold to Big Pharma, which is where the big monetization in.

> - Software reform in partnership with state/governmental agencies for criminal justice

They do exist, but again where is that funding coming from?

> - Anything to do with LLVM. LLVM is fucking cool.

Apple has that locked down, sure.

> - GraalVM is fucking cool.

That'd be Oracle's baby.

> - Music software -- production (DAW's), plugins, education software to make music theory accessible

That does exist, sure.

> - Software to make learning programming accessible. Stuff like repl.it, Codesandbox, Scrimba

Plenty of projects like that exist, sure.

> That's really pessimistic and defeatist.

Any industry with the amount of dumb money and hype as tech is going to lead to these emotional consequences. Ask yourself how much world-changing prosocial visions are on Wall Street, how many sunny optimistic dreams left unscathed by Hollywood. Silicon Valley is just another face of the bleeding edge of capital generation.