[mentalgear]

> All that remained was to decide what to do with my life. From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.

Seems shocking at first, but the more you think about what our SWE works does, for whom, and who benefits the most of it ... IMO it makes sense.

[ianbutler]

It sounds more like a depression and stress brained reduction to me. Tends to put you in a very binary and extreme thinking mode in my lived experience.

Also I inherently disagree with the idea of meaninglessness the author presents there. Meaning is relative to man, man makes meaning. There is no objective meaning and so you have to choose it for yourself.

[satvikpendem]

For many, software engineering is an artisan endeavor (hence why many are freaking out over AI, it removes their enjoyment of the process even as others, who are solution oriented, like the final output and what problems it can solve without giving a shit about the code, two different types of people).

[nicbou]

You can apply software development skills to public good. It's just not the most common path, nor the best-paid one. I should also highlight that SWE has one of the most prolific gift economies out there.

The author also forgot another path: teacher.

[embedding-shape]

Well, "essentially meaningless" does away with basically anything that isn't water and food, so lets be measured. Working on video games could be done in an ethical, sustainable and non-evil way, but also one can argue is "essentially meaningless" together with everything else too, including "artisan".