Sadly, there not many options if you want comfortable life and do good at the same time.
My fiends and I really wanted to do good when starting our careers and looked at many non-profits, all of them pay sub-market rates. And then we learned secondhand that most of these non-profits were run by narcissists leaders with worse office politics than regular offices.
We got jobs in regular companies building some of most critical infrastructure of the internet. We felt like we were contributing to advancement of humanity and freedom. But after 10 years, we realized we just made rich kids richer, divided humanity like never before, destroyed privacy, and made sure everyone is addicted to their screens.
I mostly helped in the building of the cloud, and I know what business most of our clients are in. Very few are doing something that is not harmful.
Teach in bootcamp? So that these rich-kids will have more workers?
Start your own business? Consulting? Helping other companies do evil? Another app to get hooked on? Restaurants? There is already obesity epidemic? Build new homes or rehab? I can respect that but it is capital intensive.
Anyways, I see whenever trading is mentioned people call it a useless activity while most of us are engaged in actual harmful activities.
> And then we learned secondhand that most of these non-profits were run by narcissists leaders with worse office politics than regular offices.
I've worked for a tech-focused nonprofit for the last decade, and know people who have worked for other tech nonprofits. My experience (direct and secondhand) does not match what you said here. There are lots of good mission-focused tech companies to work for (both non- and for-profit). If, as a sibling comment suggested, you want to bring clean drinking water to the world, I know people who have worked at charity: water and enjoyed it.
It's true the pay will usually be below market rate for software engineers. It still can be much higher than most people in US[0] will ever make, and not an obstacle to living comfortably (by any definition of "comfortable" I consider reasonable). It's possible it could make it more difficult to buy a nice house in a central location in one of the more expensive cities, but that's true for most people and needs systemic changes to address it.
0: I assume we're talking about the US, since that's where the really high tech salaries are (and it's the place I live and have experience)
What a load of shit. This is the same mindset folks who pop up to yell at some Google engineers have. Why are you using your skills to collect data for adtech! You could be helping bring clean drinking water to the world!
People value what they value, and should be able to work in fields that bring them happiness and don’t break the law without your judgement. Who are you to tell anyone what’s meaningful?
It's unfortunate that adtech enjoys less popularity than bringing clean drinking water to the world. That's really a tragedy and the main thing wrong with the world.
I wish I could do wildly unpopular things without people criticizing me.
The sentiments from you, and the original post I was replying to, have inherent privilege baked into them. A South Asian person with family who depends on them for remittances is ignored. A family with a child with special needs that require specific health insurance coverage is ignored. There are so many reasons people do the work they do. Presumably you think people who work in adtech, for example, are somehow morally inferior. It's this sophomoric view of the world that's bothersome. To tell anyone they should consider teaching at a coding bootcamp instead of what they're doing ... I have no words.
I'd love to hear how these folks are changing the world for the better. It's much easier to tell others what they should do with their time and money.
You paint a picture of adtech workers as underprivileged selfless providers for their disabled family.
The truth is there are underprivileged people in every type of industry, doing every kind of job. When people criticize adtech, it is not poor people they are criticizing, and I think we both know the picture you're painting is nothing like the median adtech worker.
You're using disadvantaged people as a blanket justification for the whole industry. But the industry targets everyone, whether they're disadvantaged or not. With that reasoning you can justify anything, but that's not even the core of the problem.
There are scammers who target the elderly over the phone, that have the same justification. You might think I'm picking scammers because they're so hated, but the truth is scammers are people too. They have families that depend of them, they have kids to feed, and they deserve empathy just as much as you do.
But who does their work hurt? Old people, poor people, rich people, and also other underprivileged people.
That's the real problem with the idea that doing the right thing is a privilege. You don't care who's being hurt, and you don't care what their privilege is.
If you're hurting more people than you're helping, you don't get to demand that people also love you for what you're doing, is the problem.
>Presumably you think people who work in adtech, for example, are somehow morally inferior.
No. I think that's being presumptuous.
The point is not about calling people "morally inferior". Before thinking of yourself as underprivileged and above criticism, you should try to see that there are people less privileged than you that adtech is targeting (or preying on), and people much more privileged than either of us that profit from this work.
>I'd love to hear how these folks are changing the world for the better. It's much easier to tell others what they should do with their time and money.
No, absolutely not. It's really not me who has a pet peeve against adtech in particular, it's a whole lot of people from all walks of life. Do you think I want to feel "superior" and tell you that you're "inferior"? What good does it do to anyone to think like that, exactly?
Maybe I happen to do something that is less unpopular than adtech. Or maybe not. But if you think that's why I replied to you, you're missing the point.
I think that is a little harsh. A huge amount of tech work is not meaningful. Almost none of what tech companies output is required for a meaningful or happy life. It’s just that humanity is addicted to growth and things and just “doing stuff” thinking it all matters. Just look at the several meaningless companies YC supports.
Some meaningful tech work can be found in healthcare, social work, some portions of national security work, environmental research, teaching, and other places, but they are the exceptions. My definition of meaningful is that it either helps people, in a real way, or furthers knowledge or adds to the expression of humanity (i.e., art).
In my opinion, if someone can siphon off value from the human constructed rivers of the financial markets, and then use that value to live a good life, then I don’t see the problem. Some loose arguments about market liquidity could be made.
When I first started out I actually got to develop, write and deploy complete applications as opposed to endless updates or tiny sections of some larger project. It was an amazing feeling seeing something you write being run by dozens or even hundreds of users around the world. If the code you write today is meaningful to you that's great but its been a LONG time since I could look at something running that I wrote and feel any sense of ownership in the deal. I used to tell my team - when we have a bad day something crashes or doesnt work right. When my wife has a bad day somebody may have died literally (she's a nurse). Perspective!
Don’t know about GP’s details, but IMO trading brings quite a lot of value to society especially compared to at least some non-sense tick the box software jobs. Trending brings liquidity and makes resources available to where it is needed.
Stock traders don't "provide" anything, they're just playing a part in a poor, and exploitation-buttressing, system of exchange and resource allocation.
Well don't daytrade if you're shortsighted, for sure. But if you think daytraders can afford to be shortsighted, you're very wrong - it's one of the most exposed professions in this regard, the market will react weeks or months in anticipation of an event.
Fair enough, and probably more people feel that way? Not all tech is good tech, especially not if one follows the money. But I feel the stuff I've done in my career have had a direct impact on people's lives, but perhaps it's because I self select for those kind of projects because that matters to me?
There are more ways to make an impact, such as earning a good salary and re-investing / donating to build trees, renewables or serve any of the UNDP goals that are helping society.
In fact that is probably more impactful that personally picking fruit in the garden.
I guess it just depends on the place itself not being generally net negative to society compared to the impact you can make with it.
The term valuable is subjective. What really matters is whether you are happy in whatever you’re doing.
People who make good money in trading are mostly going to spend some too somewhere which indirectly puts food on table for others.