[ilc]

You are trying to derive emotional value from your job. I did that for a long time.

I don't anymore. I learned it actually made me worse at the job, and didn't allow me to contribute to the things I DEEPLY care about, because I'm actually just pushing work.

It is not an easy lesson. But I'll take the money, and derive my value to society elsewhere. Alot easier that way.

[feoren]

Ask the people who worked at Bell Labs in its heyday, or at NASA during the Apollo program, or who make a modest living earning a salary for a charity or organization they care about -- ask them whether it's a mistake to try to derive emotional value from their jobs. The problem isn't that humans become invested in their work, the problem is that almost all jobs are stupid meaningless bullshit. It might seem like a monumental task trying to reinvent the economy so that most jobs aren't just fucking awful mind-prisons, but it's actually easier than changing human nature. Humans want to care about their work, it's just that the parasitic, psycopathic caste of C-suite "Business Leadership" nepo-babies who currently run the entire economy don't give a shit about what humans want. People in the 1950s were largely proud of their jobs, and not because they were morons, but because their jobs actually mattered, they contributed real things to the company and the world, and they were paid well -- within a factor of 10x what the CEO was paid. None of that is true anymore, and it's not human nature's fault. It's the fault of a small percentage of very specific psycopaths.