I'm a freelancer, so I've worked on a lot of stuff. I charge a reduced rate to nonprofits, which has gotten me some genuinely rewarding work, and my software ha

I'm a freelancer, so I've worked on a lot of stuff. I charge a reduced rate to nonprofits, which has gotten me some genuinely rewarding work, and my software has also had some small part in keeping innocent people out of jail. So I really have no regrets about my career, at least not from a "was what I did meritable?" standpoint. I don't feel like my comment is asking anybody to make me feel better about what I've done with my life. :) But I'm still going to stand firm on my stance that a doctor, even if they only save a few lives in their career, is providing a more valuable service than I am. There's just no way the time I've saved people has added up to even a few lifetimes. If we look at the software industry as a whole, it's just very obvious. We're an industry that likes to think we're saving the world, but the reality is that the results of software have been a very mixed bag. Facebook, for example, is pretty much just bad, and there isn't a major company out there that I wouldn't look at as being in some grey area, where it's hard to tell if they are a net positive or negative.