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The vast majority of the job postings I see are for companies optimizing the way other companies sell stuff to consumers. I don't find any meaning in that. Even

by tspike 11y ago

The vast majority of the job postings I see are for companies optimizing the way other companies sell stuff to consumers. I don't find any meaning in that. Even the "great" jobs (ones where you can focus purely on a technical challenge) don't hold much allure: why optimize technology for the sake of optimizing technology? Where am I to look for jobs where I have agency in the choice of technology and the direction of the product, a group of intelligent and supportive peers, and a product that directly improves the lives of others? These types of jobs seem to be a vanishingly small percentage of those that are available (not even accounting for the further filtering that happens: skill match, inteviewing, salary requirements, etc).

harryh 11y ago
I run the engineering team at www.hometeamcare.com It might not be immediately apparently from our website jobs here definitely satisfy all of your criteria. Let me know if you want to chat.
tolmasky 11y ago
The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of how "impact" gets made: the aha moment when a scientist discovers something in a movie. But the underlying connections between breakthroughs are much more subtle and actually impossibly difficult to predict. Who would have guessed that the video game industry would push graphics cards to a point where they are now incredibly beneficial to scientific applications? You could say the makers of PC games were just optimizing things for consumers, but there is a direct connection between what they did and the computing power we have for worthwhile applications today. Who would have guessed, in 1847, that Boole's philosophical papers on logic, would form the foundations of computing a hundred years later? George Boole died without every knowing any of this. The most impactful changes in people's lives are rarely direct. Seeking "impactful" goals is a trap in my experience. Find something that excites you and if its creative, my money's on that being more useful than you think.

by tspike 11y ago

harryh 11y ago

I run the engineering team at www.hometeamcare.com It might not be immediately apparently from our website jobs here definitely satisfy all of your criteria. Let me know if you want to chat.

tolmasky 11y ago

The problem isn't that there isn't any impactful work, its that impactful work is hard to identify at the outset. We've allowed narratives to shape our view of how "impact" gets made: the aha moment when a scientist discovers something in a movie. But the underlying connections between breakthroughs are much more subtle and actually impossibly difficult to predict. Who would have guessed that the video game industry would push graphics cards to a point where they are now incredibly beneficial to scientific applications? You could say the makers of PC games were just optimizing things for consumers, but there is a direct connection between what they did and the computing power we have for worthwhile applications today. Who would have guessed, in 1847, that Boole's philosophical papers on logic, would form the foundations of computing a hundred years later? George Boole died without every knowing any of this. The most impactful changes in people's lives are rarely direct. Seeking "impactful" goals is a trap in my experience. Find something that excites you and if its creative, my money's on that being more useful than you think.