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Do you spend time on sites where accountants, sociologists, electrical engineers, or mechanical engineers hang out and know it isn't a topic that comes up regul

Do you spend time on sites where accountants, sociologists, electrical engineers, or mechanical engineers hang out and know it isn't a topic that comes up regularly? I think the desire for one's work to have a larger impact on the world is fairly common.

true_religion 15y ago
That's not what I'm questioning. Its the accusatory tone that's unique to CS professionals. As if one should be doing something that betters the world, and if you're not then whatever you're doing is a waste. Outside of CS, people tend to read "betterment" into their current job if they're satisfied with their position. Guys who work at an umbrella plant aim to make the best damn umbrellas you've ever seen, and are happy that due to their work people are less wet and less sick than they would be otherwise. They don't go home and worry about why they aren't using their machining skills to build things for the poor instead of providing umbrellas for other relatively well off 1st worlders. It's an odd conceit that CS professionals have to say that you must do good, or else you're no good. It sparks of noble oblige, and frankly I don't think CS (whilst important) is so important that it demands that.
- danenania 15y ago
  "As if one should be doing something that betters the world, and if you're not then whatever you're doing is a waste." Well, yeah, sorta. I don't think there's any need to bring a moral component into it--we all do what we feel we gotta do to get by, but is it really disputable that we'd have a better world if all the energy that went into selling people crap that is at best useless and at worst blatantly harmful to them instead went into directly improving people's lives? To me that seems like the very definition of waste, though I also think it would be extremely foolish to think you could somehow direct people into behaving any differently. Judging the 'wasted' efforts of others is at least as much a waste as those efforts themselves. It's up to each of us to decide individually whether we can be content selling sugar water or whether we can do better... but I think honesty requires admitting that we can indeed do better, whether or not we choose to do so.

true_religion 15y ago

That's not what I'm questioning. Its the accusatory tone that's unique to CS professionals. As if one should be doing something that betters the world, and if you're not then whatever you're doing is a waste. Outside of CS, people tend to read "betterment" into their current job if they're satisfied with their position. Guys who work at an umbrella plant aim to make the best damn umbrellas you've ever seen, and are happy that due to their work people are less wet and less sick than they would be otherwise. They don't go home and worry about why they aren't using their machining skills to build things for the poor instead of providing umbrellas for other relatively well off 1st worlders. It's an odd conceit that CS professionals have to say that you must do good, or else you're no good. It sparks of noble oblige, and frankly I don't think CS (whilst important) is so important that it demands that.

danenania 15y ago
"As if one should be doing something that betters the world, and if you're not then whatever you're doing is a waste." Well, yeah, sorta. I don't think there's any need to bring a moral component into it--we all do what we feel we gotta do to get by, but is it really disputable that we'd have a better world if all the energy that went into selling people crap that is at best useless and at worst blatantly harmful to them instead went into directly improving people's lives? To me that seems like the very definition of waste, though I also think it would be extremely foolish to think you could somehow direct people into behaving any differently. Judging the 'wasted' efforts of others is at least as much a waste as those efforts themselves. It's up to each of us to decide individually whether we can be content selling sugar water or whether we can do better... but I think honesty requires admitting that we can indeed do better, whether or not we choose to do so.