[Kiyo-Lynn]

I once met a researcher who spent six months verifying the results of a published paper. In the end, all he received was a simple “thanks for pointing that out.” He said quietly, “Some work matters not because it’s seen, but because it keeps others from going wrong.”

I believe that if we’re not even willing to carefully confirm whether our predictions match reality, then no matter how impressive the technology looks, it’s only a fleeting illusion.

[jajko]

While that will not land him a Nobel prize, its miles ahead in terms of achievement and added value to mankind compared to most corporate employees. We wish we could say something like that about our past decade of work

[eru]

People typically get paid as a thank you for their corporate work, not just a lukewarm 'thanks for pointing that out.'

[Kiyo-Lynn]

A lot of the time, the work we do doesn’t get much recognition, and barely gets seen.But maybe it still helped in some small way. Thinking about that makes it feel a little less disappointing.

[pessimizer]

Why would you want to help a corporation, rather than being paid? A company's goals aren't the same as yours. The reason it isn't paying you is that its main goal is to make more money than it spends. It doesn't care whether you make more money than you spend.

[eru]

> A company's goals aren't the same as yours.

That is true for any organisation or any person that's different from you. Companies ain't special here.

> The reason it isn't paying you is that its main goal is to make more money than it spends.

Making money is the main goal of many companies, but not all.

Almost any goals of any organisation or any person can be furthered by having more money rather than less. So everyone has a similar incentive to pay you less. (This includes charities. All else being equal, if you can pay your workers less, you can hand out more free malaria nets.) But as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44179846 points out, they pay you, so that you work for them.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence

[bluGill]

by paying me enough to stay I will continue to produce value.