[avgDev]

This is a very oblivious take.

I have friends who are doctors.....their work doesn't feel meaningful. They are constantly pressured to move from patient to patient like they are cattle.

Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.

Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.

Chef? Seriously do some snooping around subreddits/message boards for these professions. You will quickly realize how corporations can make any "meaningful" job a drag and unhealthy.

Programming can be extremely meaningful. You can create great things that help society. However, many of those projects won't pay for themselves. So, if I company wants to pay me over six figures to write some code, I will gladly take it.

Plus, I am a nerd, I like building stuff, sheds, racing sims, tinkering on bikes, cars and computers. My ability to tinker with computers, write queries and programming can allow other people to do their jobs. Imagine a health system without a computer.

[AndrewKemendo]

100% of lawyers I know hate their jobs. I can’t think of a single friend of mine that is a lawyer who enjoys their work.

I have three friends who are anesthesiologists and they are all generally meh about it. They treat it like being a mechanic.

There’s always a flip side to being a helper like a doctor too - not everyone survives surgery. The thing they don’t tell you about doing that emotional labor is that it’s poorly compensated and exhausting and so people tend to dissociate and become less and less compassionate the longer they do it just as a self defense mechanism.

[sfpotter]

My mother has been a nurse in demanding and intense units for nearly 45 years. She finds the work very satisfying and is reasonably well-paid.

I know a number of lawyers who find their work intensely meaningful and are willing to put up with the bull shit despite the challenges.

[jjlustig]

Lawyers are bimodal in this regard. Many hate the work with a burning passion. Many love the work and never want to retire. IMO, it really depends on the practice area + role (e.g., M&A work vs. civil rights work or big law attorney vs. AUSA).

[yamtaddle]

> I have friends who are doctors.....their work doesn't feel meaningful. They are constantly pressured to move from patient to patient like they are cattle.

Yep, doctors stopped being in charge of healthcare entities (hospitals, clinics) and now their work conditions suck. And not just during residency, any more.

> Friend is a pharmacist, she stands 12 hours a day. She he is forced to go in sick. She gets written up for being late.

If there's one thing that would be a shock to life-long programmers, it's how just one tiny step down the in-demand ladder (I'd write "social status", but we don't actually have any of note [doctors do, but fat lot of good that did them when the capitalists finally got ahold of them], rather, we're just in-demand) means operating under management conditions we'd find intolerable. No last-minute-notice skipping out for an hour to take your dog to the vet or whatever, certainly. That kind of shit's reserved for the top half of management, in most other environments.

> Many teachers hate their jobs, they are underpaid and have to deal with all kinds of good/shitty kids.

I don't think any teacher I know would advise anyone to become a teacher. Work environment is shit, the amount of time you get to spend on the part that's why anyone wants to do teaching keeps dropping, parents are jerks with too much time on their hands, admin's the most shockingly-stupid set of people with advanced degrees ever assembled (and a bad case of petty-dictator syndrome), pay & benefits have been slowly (or, recently, not-so-slowly) falling relative to the rest of the economy for at least a couple decades, and half the voters hate you for no good reason. Do. Not. Do. It. [EDIT: Oh, and that describes a decent school district. The bad ones are all that plus a whole pile of nightmarish crap, on top]

[giantg2]

"Programming can be extremely meaningful. ... Plus, I am a nerd, I like building stuff"

Maybe to you, but not necessarily other people. There are likely people in any role that feel the work is meaningful and fulfilling, and others who do not.

[sfpotter]

Did I say that programming isn't meaningful? No, I obviously didn't. But thanks for your hostile and blinkered response.

I can think of examples of people in my life who have these professions on either side of the coin (find it meaningful, find it a drag, whatever).

I'm a programmer and find it meaningful. I also know people who are programmers and hate it. In fact, I've also worked as a chef and a teacher. I found there to be both satisfying and unsatisfying things about each of these jobs.

Clearly, different people find different work meaningful.

Having a small percentage of the jobs in society be sufficiently well compensated is a sure path to a large number of people being unsatisfied in their careers.

[avgDev]

I'm not trying to have an argument but you've said "There are many other jobs that frankly provide significantly more meaning and personal gratification to the person doing them". I was providing a counter argument to that statement because it sounded very "the grass is always greener on the other side".

Not sure why you feel I was being hostile towards you. You seem to be really getting defensive in almost aggressive manner.