Here’s my heuristic: 1) Filter down to companies that don’t actively harm people/society (this narrows things quite a bit!) 2) Take pleasure/pride in the pure

Here’s my heuristic: 1) Filter down to companies that don’t actively harm people/society (this narrows things quite a bit!) 2) Take pleasure/pride in the purely technical aspects of things: making a good system, a good UX, making things performant and elegant and robust, even if the end purpose feels very boring and/or pointless Sometimes you can do a bit better than that- I’ve had a job whose product felt interesting but pointless, and I’ve had one whose product felt boring but arguably made some people’s lives better. But you have to go pretty far off the beaten path to find one that’s truly fulfilling on all axes. For me, my job is about the paycheck and some base satisfaction from technical execution. For everything else, there’s my free time (and to that end: work life balance is important too!)