I work for companies that create things I find valuable. Currently I work for a company that makes electric vehicle chargers. Previously, I worked for a company that was making software to help streamline medical approvals. Profit is a requirement for these companies to exist, but they are creating things that do good in the world.

That said, to me the purpose of life isn't in work. It's more that I want to feel that the amount of effort I put into work isn't going to negative outcomes. So I find jobs that i believe are a net positive for society, but still only put in my 40ish hours a week and go to find my meaning in my personal life.

I'd say that no matter where you wish to find purpose my advice will be the same. Find a company that you believe is a net good to the world, and then put in however much effort you wish to that company. It does limit the amount of companies you are able to work for, but there are so many openings available for good people in software that you'll probably find plenty of opportunities regardless.

>I work for companies that create things I find valuable.

I've found this to be really important for my satisfaction. My current employer ships food to people who otherwise would have a tough time getting nutritious food (largely Medicare patients). This helps people age in their homes and delays the need and cost of nursing homes. It improves people's health outcomes significantly.

The work I do every day helps that happen more efficiently. This helps us offer the services in more areas, remain competitive, and help more people. It's a for-profit company, but we get lots of amazing feedback about how much of a difference we make in people's lives.

The team you end up with is also incredibly important. I have a great team, and have found other teams I work with to share a similar passion and mission driven focus. This is the first company I've worked with that has a really strong "feel good" aspect to it, so I'm not sure if the mission focus comes with these types of employers, or if that's something my employer specifically focuses on.

Exactly. And people get to choose whether they buy them or not. So you know if people are spending their hard earned money, they want them.

There are definitely times when governments need to force the people to work collectively and spend tax dollars together, but there are many times when they don't. For instance, I don't drive a car very much and when I do, I'm happy with dirt roads. I would much rather we didn't spend billions on roads and maintenance. Other people will have a different list of seemingly wasted spending.

The great thing about the private sector is you're letting people choose. That's not just a selfish act either because it unlocks their power to guide society. The consumers in a free society are a hive mind. The proles in a centrally-controlled society are just blobs that sit there.

I'm genuinely glad to hear that you've found a mission-driven workplace with a healthy, supportive work culture.

In my experience, I've found that many mission-driven workplaces use the righteousness of the company's purpose to justify pressure tactics paired with low pay. This is a commonly-reported experience at non-profits and even for-profit companies like SpaceX.

I'm now at a crossroads where I'm seriously considering working for companies that don't create particularly useful things for society, but where the culture is better to work at. The ideal would be to find a company with both a good purpose and a positive work culture, but I believe these are hard to find.

This is the conclusion I found after working for a company people are passionate about working for. I prefer my current company which has a fine (if bland) product but the culture is fantastic, I have a lot of agency in my work, and the pay is great. I enjoy my day to day life in this situation.

what is the name of the company, if you don't mind? thanks either way.

This ^

To me the question - independent of whether the organization is non-profit, for-profit, public, or private - is the organization itself mission-driven?

And if yes, do I deep-down want to that mission to be successful?

I felt the same way when I worked for a semiconductor (memory) manufacturer, who also (at least said they were) quite environmentally conscious. Helping lower the market prices for a life- and world-changing commodity, and helping make the jobs of esteemed fellow employees somewhat easier, and supporting a family, felt rewarding.

Does anyone working in software honestly feel like their work gives them a strong sense of purpose? Honestly I'd imagine the far majority don't, working on proprietary code for companies driven solely by profit, within agile factories where a developer's sole role is to churn out tickets on an assembly line, and have no real ownership or stake in the company's success. Hence the high rate of burnout despite the job being relatively cushy and high-paying. It certainly is a spectrum however (for me adtech felt the most meaningless).

Any job where you're someone else's employee naturally means you're sacrificing autonomy and freedom over your work, probably in the name of private profit over social good, so will probably not be as enjoyable being able to work on one's own terms unless one feels they are accomplishing more through this arrangement than they could be otherwise.

For me what personally excites me most in the tech world right now is tech that is open source, modular, and decentralized (basically the goal of web3). The idea of building a decentralized, modular, open source <insert big tech platform> sounds more interesting than golden handcuffs at <big tech company> (who IMO have also been fairly stagnant innovation wise outside of just performance and scaling under the old centralization paradigm).

I haven't made the jump though. And at the end of the day I'm still kind of a slave to money until I'm financially independent, and if I'm going to sell my labor to someone else, I might as well sell to the highest builder (assuming it ethically aligns). Haven't spent much time really looking though, with the crypto/web3 boom it may finally be reasonably possible to do that sort of work and still get paid handsomely.

I work for a company that is owned by and serves pension funds. If I do my job well, it means better retirement savings for nurses, teachers and kindergarden teachers. That's pretty motivating.

I work in healthcare technology.

The software I wrote saved two people's life last week.

So, yeah.

Purpose.

Kudos, but is there a flip side of the coin, where the software you write can cost someone life (if you screw something up/introduce a bug)?

Is that a downside? Clearly if his code hadn't worked those 2 people would not be alive right now, so in that sense yes bugs will kill people. But if there is no consequence on the world when you write bugs, can there be purpose in the work?

Not a downside per se, but I wonder how, in the context of other engineering disciplines which are highly formalized, software engineering fits in. One of the typical arguments against the feasibility of formalizing and licensing software engineers as PEs (in the USA) is that the stuff we create "cannot kill anyone" unlike, for example, a civil engineer whose work is very structured and vetted.

Don't get confused - unlike many software engineering branches, the medical one is highly regulated.

Take a look at Medical Device Regulation, which sets out standards for medical devices - software included (in fact, any medical software is automatically considered an active medical device).

The demand for supervision is so high, there are now third party companies (Notified Bodies) taking care of the approvals. They are appointed by their respective Certification Authorities (which are governmental organisations).

The approval usually works in the way where the manufacturer classifies the device and performs all the necessary tests and submits the documentation to the Notified Bodies where they verify that the device is correctly classified and all the necessary tests for the given class of the device have been performed and that the documentation checks out.

MDR: https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/medic...

There was a PE exam for software engineering in the USA, so I think it is possible to formalize the field for practice. Whether or not that formalization appeals to practitioners is another discussion.

In 2019, the PE software exam was discontinued: https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

I'm in remote patient monitoring, so while that's unlikely, it is a horrifying possibility that keeps me up at night.

If our API that accepts readings from devices goes down, real people's health could be at risk.

We have multiple levels of redundancy, including at the device level, but it is the point of highest stress.

That is amazing! Good for you. What type of software is this?

Can you share more?

I've never found sense of purpose at work. I wish I could but nope.

The idea of passion projects is what keeps me going but to be honest, work tends to exhaust me to the point that my own projects make no real progress and I don't know if I can ever make something I'd feel happy about.

Have you tried getting up earlier (and going to sleep earlier) to save your best hours in the morning for your own work? It's easier said than done, especially if you have family to take care of, but it's the go-to solution recommended by past HN users for getting personal work done when the workplace is exhausting.

I think that's right, and it is how I feel as well. I find enjoyment and fulfillment in my passion projects, or making things used by friends and family in ways that they love (home videos on Plex have made me an all star), and that's enough for me. Getting my Arduino to blink for the first time is far more fulfilling than any line of code I've written for work, and while I've liked and sometimes loved my jobs so far (and been lucky in that way), I am well aware that I am a "resource" and must limit how much it impacts me accordingly. Work in the private sector is a means to me having the funds to do the things I want in my private life.

In my experience, the public VS private debate is a false dichotomy. Here is why :

- What influences your day to day experience is the size of the firm for which you work. Big gov and big corp have much more in common than a startup and a small charity group. Think about how the abundance of ressources, staff, speed of change, stability and reputation management will affect your job. Big firms often have two employees for the same role (in case one of them goes away), while small firm often have two roles for the same employee.

- For most people, ''vision'' is a buzzword. By construction, it should come out of your imagination ; it is a desired change on actual reality. This is why vision jobs are less secure than 'pragmatic' jobs. Sense of purpose is an experience where your action are aligned with your vision ; you understand how your work builds the vision. It gives fire in the belly!

- Money being a lag indicator of the state of affairs, profit or security seeking people (which are the same thing with a different name) often end up in big organizations. People with a strong sense of purpose would rather want to join a small group with an non-established business model which aims to change the world.

In other words :

Profit & Security => Established & working business model => big organization => hierarchy with redundance => low sense of purpose

Financial risk => Unproven business model => small firm => too much jobs for few people => high sense of purpose.

Honestly? It's little more than the better pay for me. I'm generally a conscious person with politics based on empathy and equality, and I have the same thoughts you have, but I have never worked in the public sector due to low salaries compared to the private sector.

I don't lie to myself, either. What I create is not making the world a better place by much at all. I'm making industry software that helps create products. Nothing more, nothing less. I steer clear of miltech or creating software for police or secret services, but apart from that, all it does is create value for some shareholders somewhere while pumping out products that are probably unnecessary and wasteful.

It's an interior conflict that does not go away, and I won't say I have resolved any of it for me. I know that I'm not contributing to saving the world, and it sucks. But I'm also not really in a position to change that. Furthermore, I'm not in a field where governments usually look for talent, and I do enjoy the freedom of creating my own systems with the architecture I prefer and not being constrained by the tight requirements of gov systems.

The little purpose I do find is in creating quality software that kind of makes stuff more efficient and by extension, helps progress towards a more sustainable future with less manual labor. But, in a way, that's what everyone on Earth does, so it's not much.

I have worked in the public and private sectors for 25 years, 60/40.

I am religious so have given your question much thought over the years. For me purpose is found in my faith, my family, my church and my work. Whether you are religious or not I think the takeaway is that purpose is a combination of factors. My work enables to look after my family and do other things. I am happy if I get to use my skills at work. Don't put all your eggs in one basket :-)

> Where do you find your sense of purpose working in the private sector?

In some sense, I don't.

At this point in my life, my tech job essentially funds my living expenses: a place to live, food, etc. That isn't to say that I don't like my job - I do, I am still passionate about doing a good job, and I know that my work helps other people - but my purpose doesn't involve work necessarily.

My sense of purpose lies outside all of that. I practice martial arts regularly. I volunteer as a crisis counselor for a local crisis center doing all sorts of things. I love getting outside on a cold day and just going for a walk. I love being with friends. Work provides me the money and the flexibility to do all of it.

I would suggest that, if you are moving into the private sector but still want to serve without worrying about profits, look for charities and other nonprofits in your area and get involved. Maybe even think about what fields of interest matter most to you (is it homelessness? LGBTQ issues? immigration-related issues? mental health?) and find resources near you that are addressing those things.

Working in private sector can provide you the foundation for doing other work elsewhere at the same time. Work doesn't have to provide everything.

By making something useful! There's nothing wrong with charging an honest price for a useful service. That can be just as valuable as public service.

Further to this - most useful goods and services are made in the private sector. Food, clothing, housing. Pretty good stuff.

Very reasonable people wonder how anyone can spend time in the public sector. They don't seem to get much done there, they waste a lot of people's hard earned money. They can be viewed as at best a necessary evil, and at worst downright corrupt. I don't agree 100% with those notions, but they aren't crazy either.

In order of importance:

    1. Paycheck
    2. People
    3. Purpose

When you get lucky you have all 3. Most of use are pretty happy when we have the first 2. If you are paid enough then you may not care about the other two.

I'm sure you'll get a wide variety of answers here.

As a software engineer, I like solving complex technical problems and learning software, management, and people skills. It doesn't matter to me what I'm doing as long as it's ethical and I can grow.

I don't understand why you think profit is a bad thing.

Ignoring broken markets like in the case of monopolies (and my company is a small one--definitely not a monopoly!), profit means you're creating value. People are willing to pay you more money than something costs to produce. That's a good thing for everyone involved. It creates jobs, customers are happy, and investors make money.

"Profit" isn't just a bunch of extra cash that gets buried in the ground. It goes back to shareholders (again, ignoring outliers like Apple which horde cash...) and gets reinvested in other profitable enterprises creating even more value.

often companies are the sole providers of needed products and services.

or increased efficiency which is important too. I work on software that makes factory and warehouse operations more power efficient, and that feels meaningful to me!

Finding your sense of purpose in your work is bad, IMO, unless you own the company or have a similar position. I don't want my self-worth to be tied to an employer or market that can get rid of me any time. It's just a job. At best, I work in places that aren't morally against my values.

I was a teacher for almost a decade. I had a fulfilled sense of purpose and was miserable doing it. I was also paid poorly.

For the past 6 years I've been doing data work for government contractors. I feel no sense of purpose with the work I produce and I'm happier in my life than at most any point.

My partner works for a pharmaceutical lab and does world changing work. They work on cancer drugs, COVID vaccines, etc. It's a meat grinder and she and all her coworkers hate it.

The first question you need to answer for yourself is what is your purpose in life, what makes you happy, how do you want to spend the days you have. Then ask yourself how to structure your work and life to serve those goals. For me that means not having to care about work, and I'm much happier with my life now that I don't.

I completely agree, find your purpose outside of work. This can take many forms from spiritual to practical but I firmly believe you need to find a reason for existing outside of your job.

Probably the best answer here. Need to work on distancing myself from work psychologically

I work on a project that tens of millions of people use every day, my mom uses code that I wrote on her phone and computer. She's super proud of me. Knowing this gives me an incredible satisfaction every single day and its an amazing feeling. I feel so lucky that the adage "choose a career you enjoy doing and you'll never have to work a day in your life" is actually true for me.

Profit doesn’t exist if you’re not fulfilling customer needs.* Find a need that people pay for that to find fulfilling and go support it.

*In theory. In practice, there are all types of companies that exist due to regulatory quirks / that customers are forced to interact with. If you flip it, technically people are forced to work with the government whether they like it or not and regardless of the quality of service. In the private sector they have a choice of using your company. At the extreme, if it is bad enough, they can start their own.

Unfortunately, people "need" a lot of drugs, cigarettes, booze, mindless and/or harmful distractions and entertainment etc. A small fraction of our economy is serving people's real needs, while the rest is serving wants, which are quite often not good for the people who want them.

>At the extreme, if it is bad enough, they can start their own.

That is not a realistic proposition, either. People are as forced to use private services as they are forced to use government ones. There might be a competitor, but even that does not necessarily provide cheaper or better service or products.

You can find companies/projects that while "driven by profit" still make good things, things that genuinely help or enrich peoples' life. You don't have to jump to the other extreme and work on harmful projects. Can also work for non-profit companies as well.

On a more personal level as a programmer there's always some exciting problem to solve, something that can be optimised. Also, being in the games industry I get to interact with a lot of artists which is something I've always looked for.

> Where do you find your sense of purpose working in the private sector?

I work on improving the treatment of cancer through the application of deep learning. I am employed by a FAANG and work very closely with several leading nonprofit academic medical centres. Our primary driver is real-world patient impact (rather than, say, revenue or just academic publications).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of downsides to working in this space but lacking a sense of purpose isn't one of them (for me).

Ultimately, the company you are employed by is employing you to improve their bottom-line, as all of FAANG are for-profit companies. If your branch suddenly starts eating away profits (research proving something your company does is bad for example) or being too costly without improving the profits, there is a real risk they'll cut your branch/team. Is that not a fear for you? I'd like to understand the reasoning how it doesn't concern you.

> Is that not a fear for you?

Would I be disappointed if my project got cancelled? Yes. I think it would be a missed opportunity for my employer to make a meaningful change in an important space.

Am I fearful of it being cancelled? Absolutely not. I'll just find a new gig and move on with my life.

Last time my (much more commercially-focussed) project got canned, I had four very exciting offers lined up within a few weeks. All of those internal and within my very tight geographic constraints (couple of cities in Europe). I didn't even bother interviewing with other companies as I felt no need.

In the end, the cancellation turned out to be a great thing for me personally as it forced me to move. In the process of that move I found the current -- much more fulfilling -- gig.

Much as I love it, at the end of the day it's just a job. There are plenty of other opportunities out there if I ever need to find a new one.

This is off-topic a bit but something on my mind lately is this: there are known mechanisms for making a corporation accountable to something other than management profit, so why don't places use them? B incorporation, employee cooperative profit sharing arrangements, and so forth.

Maybe I'm overly cynical at this point in my life, or maybe it's just because I'm just unfamiliar with this stuff, but it seems like if places really wanted to prioritize something other than raw profit they'd do so. All this other stuff seems like rationalizations to me sometimes.

I don't want to come across the wrong way; I think there's a lot of good that can come from focusing on the bottom line. I just sometimes feel like greater diversity of organizational mechanisms would make the world a better place.

Profit just means your produce more things of value than you consume. It is the first part of true sustainability. If it hurts the bigger org it might be cut but if it’s sustainable it wont need the support of the bigger org.

I had a similar transition from public -> private, but much earlier in my career.

My advice is to find meaning outside of work, and then go work in the private sector.

One of the things I miss the most about public sector work was you can actually spend time worrying about what's the "good" thing to do, rather than just optimizing a KPI. However, in practice I saw what it sounds like you are seeing now: you don't really serve the public you serve the bureaucracy.

At this point in my career I'm making close to triple what I would have if I stayed in the public sector, and my work life balance is better than it was back then. This means that I have time to work on projects and things I find meaningful and actively contribute to communities I care about. Ultimately I have a bigger impact on people's lives with extra income and free time than I did when I was supposedly working full time to help people.

One caveat: try not to work for any direct to consumer companies, especially startups. It's okay if private sector work isn't meaningful, but when you are actively working to rip people off while your PM cheers about how you're making the world a better place, it feels gross. B2B, in my experience, tends to have less repulsive practices.

Green tech / energy efficiency is a good part of private sector to work in in terms of purpose. Or maybe you could find a different part of the government? Maybe other parts are less beaurocratic, more modern tech, or a least less resistant to change? Having worked in both public and private sector, I far prefer the public sector. But you have to be in a decent bit of it of course....

I have been in both sides of the fence, and I've struggled with what you are talking about.

Currently I work on a mid-size corporation (when I joined it was a small startup). At the end of the day, the main outcome of the time I invest at work is making some already-rich investor potentially richer. I don't find that part particularly motivating.

I have also worked on the public sector. I encountered resistance to change, and outdated technology. It helped a little bit when someone I really disliked was voted and took power. I understood better what they were up against :) . But yes, during my time at the public sector I was really motivated. It took a lot of effort and it didn't always pan out, but sometimes I would really feel that my work was benefitting society as a whole. I'm not going to lie, I often miss that.

The problem with that public sector job I got: there was no project manager. Politicians with very little project management experience were directing the developers. It was ... intense. The project sort of worked at the end, but it almost costed me my sanity. I got an offer in the private sector and I quit before the term was done.

My current job has project managers. And product owners. Things are planned. The world sends us curveballs. We reprioritize. There is little drama. My team is international, so I get to interact with lots of interesting people from all around the world. And we do open source work, which helps the world a little bit. And yes, the pay is better. I wouldn't say that I have "found purpose" on this work, but I have found other things that the other job didn't offer.

(By the way, if someone is looking for work, I currently work at Kong. I am personally looking for people in Europe with experience in Nginx/Openresty in particular. If that's you, I really want to talk to you! If not, we have many open positions[1] all around the world, remote, with several technologies)

[1] https://konghq.com/careers/

The private sector varies pretty heavily. I think it's fair to say that some companies/industries have a much better "purpose" than others.

I work in online payments right now. It's no Stripe - we're a smaller shop. But ultimately it feels good to know that many small businesses and mom-n-pop shops depend on us for their livelihood.

On the flip-side, I have a friend who spent many years working for this weird ponzi scheme / multi-level-marketing shop (overseas) that spent their insane earnings funding really bad movies starring the founder's adult kids. I have to imagine that person would have a much harder time finding a sense of purpose than I do at my current employer.

I work in the security industry. The products I work on help keep hundreds of thousands of people safer in an online world whose threat landscape is expanding daily. That sounds like a marketing sound bite, but it's absolutely true.

To be honest, a job is a job that pays the bills. Civilization is a huge resource optimization machine, and while there are pathologies, generally I believe in the market economys capability in guiding resource utilization. I.e. if someone pays for a job to be well done, I presume it is a job that's worth doing.

Mind you, for me it's obvious my employers software is useful as it is used in large construction project globally. Hence, for me I can point at buildings and say our work helped in achieving them.

I also to like to work with other people - there is very nice sense of achievement when a team manages to ship the next version to happy customers.

Many companies manage to make a profit while doing good in the world. "Doing good" can also include providing a product or service that people are happy to pay for.

And I've also found my most satisfying jobs are where I can bring up junior people, and shape their careers. Be the manager you wish you had and bring up your reports to be managers like that too, and to pass it on themselves - the good you do will keep on happening after you've left the scene, possibly for ever.

If the good people don't step up to manage, the bad ones will. Increasing the world's share of good ones is a worthy goal.

You can think of it as "driven by profit", but it's just as true that it's driven by trying to solve people's problems in a better and/or cheaper way than before.

In the end, a business either makes customers lives better, or it dies.

I feel good about improving the lives of my employer's customers, as well as about helping my team and my employer do well.

I'm not saving the world, sure. But I don't think that's a particularly sane goal for an individual.

Having said all that, what really makes a job good for me is the people I work with.

I worked at a gaggle of jobs for anywhere from a week up to a year and a half or so before I got my current job, where I've been for over five years now (and I imagine I have at least another two if not more, but that's all logistics). I work for TRD writing software for their NASCAR teams. It's very challenging on and under the surface, great fun, and the company has been very good to me. We have no paying customers and the user base is very small so the pressure is high but not in the way that you get with paying customers. We can set a ton of the expectations and limits of our software, and our few users are generally easy to please. Oh yeah, and we're fully remote with generous expectations for hours. My work/life balance is amazing, even (especially?) compared to my peers in Big Tech Co, some of which left us for them.

On the downsides, the team is small and ownership is often siloed which can ramp up pressure. Also, races happen on Friday thru Sunday typically so those of us working on live software trade some weekdays for weekends (remote work has made this way less of an issue). The pay is above average, but we can't compete with Big Tech Co. in the same state, so retaining ambitious people can be difficult. Finally, we move quickly and often don't really have time to go back and refactor/restructure old projects on official hours, which can make transitions difficult.

Motorsports may not be my passion, and it may have taken awhile to get here, but I'm really quite happy here.

There is only one purpose in life… to make yourself happy! In the grand scheme of the universe nothing you do matters therefore there is no point in chasing anything but your own happiness! Speaking for myself I love writing software per se… I don’t care what that software is for (the joy for me is the technological challenge and the design… I don’t care what real world problem the software itself address). Past that the money you earn help you in finding joy in other things like hobbies, a family… friends!

When I was a kid, I did pest control because Mom managed the office there. It's obvious that you're saving people's homes and trees.

When I was older, I wrote software that kept power plans safe by making sure that the fire protection equipment was inspected.

Then I ran an Internet Service, back in the days of dial up. I helped hundreds of people get on the internet back in the 1990s. I wrote the software the used to install WinSock.

At the same time with the internet, I also repaired industrial control electronics, which were used by industry in mighty rolling mills that stretched steel like taffy.

After that, I was the computer guy "Manager of IT" at a company that did marketing campaigns for large corporations at trade shows, like CES, etc. They would come to us way too late, and we would scramble like mad to make sure they were able to deliver their message to the world. My little part was to make sure that about 50 people could use their computers and the servers I managed, to get everything done, regardless of where they were in the world.

Then I worked in a job shop, where we made gears. If you have a Marvel 8" bandsaw made between 2015 and 2019, I ran the Gleason Bevel gear cutter that cut the teeth on the lower band wheel and the pinion that drives it. I also learned a boat load about the process of production, and the culture.

I've never worked for government, all of those jobs helped other people, directly, or indirectly. Made them safer, happier, more well informed, in some fashion.

Making something that has moving parts and works is satisfying in itself. Using your intelligence to make that thing readable, maintainable and well organised is a bonus. Making tools to help other folk do this is a further bonus. As the quality of so many other jobs is in freefall, just about every developer job is to be cherished.

My mid-size (140) well-run company is as healthy a human environment as I'm likely to find. Toxic bicycle associations I've been part of, or sleepy public sector workplaces I've known, have helped set my expectations. So I've absolutely no problem that my company makes a wholesome profit for it's founders. I see a little bit of it, and I'd much rather be coding than doing what they do.

Developer culture, as it's matured, is fairly remarkable for it's openess and flatness, and I'm mostly very happy with the company of developers and their weird hobbies. More women would be nice.

Despite the predictions that it would all move to India, developers have been constantly in demand since I started doing this 25 years ago. It's let me travel and work wherever I want, and now it's going to let me work remotely so I can spend time with ageing parents on the other side of the world. WTF. I must have been very good in a past life.

Point #1 - you are going to find the same bureaucracy, aversion to change and outdated technology at any large for-profit company.

----

Point #2 - I do not understand how anyone could have a sense of purpose working in the public sector. Around me, every level of government is filled with low levels of corruption. Our municipal workers do things like "buy 15 years of service" for $3,600 to jack up their retirement benefits by $40,000 per year. Or they work 120 hours per week overtime in the last year before retirement. All legal because it's approved by the managers. One manager of a municipality near me embezzled $3.6 million over about a decade. She's in jail now. Failed project after failed project, no accountability for money spent. I once worked for a company who had a local municipality as a customer. One municipal employee called me saying their printer wasn't working. I figured I'd walk her through some basic troubleshooting tasks but before I got the first one out she said, "Can you just come out?" Her printer power cord was unplugged. The entire office was sitting around talking like they had nothing to do while I plugged the printer in and it worked right away.

Business has purpose too. It's providing a good or service that someone is voluntarily engaging in because they derive some benefit out of it. That's exciting to be part of. If the business creates more value for people than it spends on creating that, it profits, and incentivizes the business to keep going. It's a win-win in that each party gets something they want, the good/service or money. A business that is losing money is either not creating something that society values, or is doing it at too high a cost and is being wasteful of resources. This is a signal that they should change strategy to become profitable (create a better product, or do it cheaper) or close down and allow those resources to be allocated elsewhere.

Yes, this is an idealized view and there are business that profit from shady or fraudulent practices or rent seeking behavior. Over time, businesses that treat customers or workers unfairly will fail as fewer and fewer will want to do business with them or work for them, assuming the existence of competition or the possibility of new competition which has yet to be created. By all means, if a company you join is doing something unethical you should follow your conscience and consider leaving.

Maybe I'm lucky to have never been part of a team that focuses solely on profit for profit's sake. Profit should be the reward for having a well run business. We always focused on creating products that were helpful to customers, controlling costs, and reducing risk. Profit naturally follows from that.

As others have stated, big companies can be slow moving and bureaucratic as well but even at that level it might be an improvement over government. It also varies a lot based on the company and the team.

Family or something else external to your job. Being a competent professional is a good purpose and doesn't blind you to opportunities outside your current work project or employer.

I know the 'crusade' attitude of many non-profits, but it wears and eventually leaves you. You need to have a sense of purpose that won't fade nor leave you. So many folks have decided not to invest in family or friends that only work is left.

> I don't really know what drives people.

WHO do you want serve? Think potential end-users or clients.

Is there a community or market niche that might best benefit from your experience and expertise?

The portfolio companies at Lowercarbon Capital are doing interesting mission-driven work. > https://lowercarboncapital.com/companies/

Private sector is not immune to your woes. You’ve got grass is greener syndrome. Experiences vary between public and private so wildly that it’s not worth comparing them each as a monolith.

Personally - I gave up on the non-profit/do-something-holy mission after I got out of college and I realized no government or university was going to hire me for some mundane reason. (I had been employed at a university before) So I went with private options - doing startups, enterprise, seeing a company to IPO, joining large public tech companies, etc.

I don’t regret it. It certainly pays much better. I know the troubles with government/public positions and I handsomely prefer the quality of life improvements I’ve been afforded that come with working in the private sector.

Truth is - government often uses a lot of the private sector anyway. I worked at a company that had government contracts. So, in some ways, I was a public worker as much as anyone else. I just got paid better than if I was in the government. The government pays like it’s 1950 and you live in a LCOL area.

The sense of "meaning" in work is sensory, it isn't rationalized. The most effective utilitarian job in the world won't feel meaningful if you don't like the work. If your job affords deep flow, few interruptions and adequate social interaction, you'll be hard-pressed to get a better environment. Maybe you're bored with your tasks. Our monkey brains light up when the right circumstances surrounding work are there. If the whole sector leaves you jaded now, then best find some refuge in pet projects.

I was always someone more interested in the ends, the ideas, and immediately lose interest when it came to the prospect of implementation. To an extent it's still in my nature, but I've learned the hard way you have to start appreciating the means for their own sake; the abstractions to justify them don't necessarily matter. If you dwell on them long enough you'll convince yourself they're bs anyway and not necessary. Nothing is "necessary".

There are options that are mid-way between pure profit-driven enterprises and public sector such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, 4ocean, Citizen Lab, etc.

If you are of the hacker mindset, you could also hunt bugs through any number of programs—you make a living and software gets safer.

There are an almost limitless charities that all need quality staff to help their missions; technical or otherwise. You did not say what you were looking to to but charity organizations typically have horrible tech.

Then there are the nonprofits that work in the public interest. Great options in health, policy, environment, etc.

Also foundations and think tanks that tend to be purpose-driven and less motivated by profits.

You could start a foundation, nonprofit, charity or other mission-driven organization! Never before has there been so much capital and so many great tools to form and run your own thing. Leverage your public sector network (after your cooling off period, if applicable).

I feel your pain working in the public sector, but you have options and there is purpose and mission out there! Good luck.

I don't. I like many things about my job, like the colleagues, the environment, heck, it even has the best desk I've sat at so far, but I'm under no illusion that, if my whole industry would disappear into the Ocean overnight, any tears would be shed for it.

I just need the money and found the least-soul-crushing way to get it, while I find my purpose in life elsewhere.

There are private sector companies that are not wholly driven by profit. They seem few and far between in this climate, but they do exist and sometimes grab headlines.

I read of Wil Reynolds and Seer Interactive[1] yesterday. It's inspiring.

Other than suggesting you apply for a job there, one thing to consider is starting your own business. Never having worked in business is not an issue: you need a basic nose for marketing / advertising, a willingness to work hard, and something you think people will spend money for. Find a sense of purpose by doing what you want: what you find fulfilling. What would you spend money on? Then organise your business to fit your ethics.

[1] https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/wil-reynolds-seer-interac...

I got lucky and started working for a brand new private school last year. Coding is part of the core curriculum and afternoons are devoted to project-based learning. I get to work on a very small team trying to build an effective school from the ground up. I get to work on electronics, write code, and learn about education with the end goal of helping kids thrive in school and beyond.

If I weren't working for the school, I would want to work for a company whose core competency makes the world a better place in some way. I felt fulfilled working for a test prep company because I could help people take the next step in their education. I've also worked for a consumer-facing electronics company and felt very little motivation to go above and beyond because ultimately I was helping sell crap to people who didn't need it.

My sense of purpose comes from two places :

A) the ability to innovate through R&D. Perhaps this is egotistical but it brings a lot of purpose to my work.

B) developing people’s careers and offering a fair opportunity for success.

Yes, perhaps these purposes are not quite as altruistic but I am passionate about such a job and great people I work with.

I worked in public sector and was constantly bothered by the wastful.spending unaccpuntability, bull#@$ and politics. It was like a British of a fresh air to move to private sector. By comparison way more efficiently way less bull#$#@ and way less politics IMHO.

If I were to work for Meta, my sense of purpose would probably be that we help connect people around the world. Billions of people love and enjoy our product.

If I worked for Uber, I would feel pride how we've helped many people move around especially these without a lot of means.

If I worked for Amazon I'd be proud how we increase productivity across the world.

And on and on...

So for me at least it is the other way around, how can you feel purpose when you know your work can be done xN times more efficient? When you see through empty claims and politics to fight for budget.

By working on proprietary technology I (and many people) use daily, which I couldn't make myself, e.g. car infotainment, kernels and drivers. Pointing at something and saying "I partly made that". Being able to touch what you develop makes the rubber hit the road.

Think of profit as a natural way to make an activity self-sustaining. And if a product is profitable, it likely has an authentic reason for continuing, namely that it’s creating value for customers. Now, of course, judgment is still required to ensure your profitable activity is good for society, ethical for everyone involved, etc. But to me, I’d rather be working on something that meets the criteria above than a non-profit or gov project that requires donations (or gov appropriations), because those things can continue (or be halted) for very unnatural reasons and there’s no guarantee the value being created exceeds the effort put in. Hope that helps you!

I find fulfillment from solving hard problems through my own cleverness. I wouldn't work on something that hurts people but I also don't care about the end results beyond proving to myself that I can.

What kind of hard problems, may I know?

In my case I'm a direct response marketer, so it's finding ways to maximize volume and decrease cost per customer acquisition in very competitive spaces. A very different thing than what most developers would think of as a hard problem.

I find direct response marketing fascinating because in a way its discovering truth - not what people say the want, but what they actually take action on.

I work in the public sector -- and I enjoy my work, and it has meaning... But it's not my purpose.

I don't think I could ever do a meaningless job. (That is to say, I don't think I could ever write for Hollywood Tabloids -- utterly devoid of meaning!)

But meaningful is different to me than my purpose. I could engineer the signage for a fast food restaurant and be decently content. But my purpose in life is not to improve a company's bottom line, or engineer signage. My purpose in life is found outside employment. Mainly in things I volunteer at, but also as a husband.

My sense of purpose comes from self improvement (learning new skills, improving skills I already know), it has very little to do with my work anymore. I believe it's dangerous to tie your self worth and purpose to your job. Working in the corporate/private sector will only drain you when you realize the company you work for treats you like a resource rather than a human being. So my advice is find purpose outside of your work, and use your work as a means to fund your needs/hobbies/interest, rather than your purpose for existing.

A few areas:

- Working for an organization that provides some service or product that you believe is valuable and under appreciated

- If like protecting people, you may find purpose in security, fraud prevention, etc

- If you value privacy, you may find purpose with encryption techologies, etc

Don't rely on the company to give you a sense of purpose. Decide what is valuable to you and find a way to fill it.

I've spent time working for a company that made software for churches, working for a special needs therapy practice and working to advance DMARC adoption. All of these roles have been very fulfilling in different ways.

As a founder my passion comes from working on my startup. The primary one being to help other founders: https://cxo.industries

It is probably much easier in the private sector, you'll typically be expected and empowered to produce results and achieve goals. The red tape and foot dragging you find in the public sector doesn't last long, people who perform poorly and block others tend to get swept out. Exceptions being the cable tv providers because they are monopolies and have no motivation to do well, and small businesses where you often have unskilled and inexperienced people leading (think every episode of Kitchen Nightmares you ever saw).

You might want to check out the nonprofit world. I've been in private and public sector IT and felt the same way you do. The public sector was frustrating. I couldn't get into the private sector work, nothing I did was worth it. But I've found a happy place at a non-profit. It's a small place and doesn't suffer from the govt drag. I believe we all share a common mission, and I like that mission. The people I work with are all into it. It helps that I really like the people I work with.

For me, it's the code. Making existing code better, finding elegant solutions, learning new tools and tricks, and helping other programmers improve. When the code's new, it's like sculpting crossed with poetry, but testable. When the code's old and crufty it's like restoring an old car.

I'm just glad that a big stable company is willing to pay me to do it, I don't really care that we're not curing cancer. Taking personal pride in a business you don't own invites heartbreak anyway...

I don't. I find my purpose in what I'm able to do because I'm employed, not in employment. I can't donate time and money because I have both. I can spend time with my family because we're not struggling to pay our bills, requiring a "side hustle." I can put my kid in a school that supports out value I'm science and not worry about book bans that avoid complex subjects because I can afford it.

I am not what I do for money. I am what I do with it.

To think about it, govt is supposed to be profitable while providing the services. Private is no different. You have to be better and cheaper than your competition.

Government is not supposed to be profitable. It is supposed to minimize cost of meeting needs that the voters agree should be provided by the government.

“Profit” in the public sector would indicate that too much tax money was collected, because there shouldn’t be a surplus at the end of a year. There shouldn’t be a deficit either, but that’s a different story.

Neither of these are correct, they're libertarian talking points. You can't really distangle the competing goals of different classes, but if you were to take democracy seriously, it is to do whatever the majority wants. Some problems with that when it conflicts with certain fundamental values, but the US mostly doesn't follow majority rule anyway as is documented in many studies.

I spent the last decade working for private vendors whose customers are in the public sector. When self-owned/bootstrapped, it has been a lovely balance. When VC-owned, it has been more soul crushing than you could imagine.

But you can use that knowledge to find a good home - look at the SaaS products your public sector orgs use, find one that is still small, and see what help they need. There are some great groups, and great people in this niche.

Beware of faraway fields, If you find bureaucracy and legacy tech difficult to deal with stay away from any regulated industries like pharma or finance. E.g. try writing a report why your team widened a column on a controlled excel sheet that could no longer show all the values without raising both types of change control, apparently one is not enough then you have to write the report and go to a meeting to explain it.

There are plenty of mission driven private sector companies. Find one with a mission you align with. For me, it is really rewarding to help people create and upskill tech careers at Pluralsight.

I regularly hear stories or see posts online about people going from low wage jobs to a web dev career within a year using Pluralsight. Making an annual income nobody in their family has ever gotten close to making before. Transformative.

Find a company that helps others as part of its products. Its easy to hand wave and claim entire industries are filled with companies that are greedy but there are companies out there with a purpose/mission that aligns with something other than greed.

Or (tongue-in-cheek) find a large non-tech Fortune 500 company, you'll feel like you're working for the government since they move slow and have lots of bureaucracy.

I have a high score that I increase and this high score allows me to do cool stuff like spend weeks on end studying ancient Greek for the sake of it.

I think people who work 40 hours a week in actual jobs are kind of insane. Like yeah, do it for a few years, get the money, get out. Why anyone would spend their entire life in a job job is beyond me (unless they're being paid minimum wage and actually trapped).

The message implies that everyone HAS TO have their sense of purpose. But it's absolutely fine not to have any meaning and just live your life.

Helping the users of my system by making things faster and / or more obvious is motivating. Improving the code is motivating. Providing for my family is motivating. Keeping our super small business afloat is motivating (I’m blessed to work on a small team with people I like.)

Edit: I worked for the govt for all of 2 weeks— a mistake I won’t make again. I hope you find satisfaction with whatever you choose.

Interview with a lot of companies, only accept a job if you believe that you'll enjoy it. If you're interviewing with a small company, make sure to meet the founder(s) and/or leadership. You'll get a good idea quickly if you'll find purpose.

What you'll find is that most people you work with are honest people who share similar values to you.

"Where do you find your sense of purpose working in the private sector?"

I don't. Probably best to look at your personal life rather than professional.

Also, the frustration, bureaucracy, etc is also present in the private sector. At least that's my experience. If anything, you'll have less worker protection than working as a civilian for the government.

Not all of private sector is about money. What's your take on working in private sector on open source projects? How do you feel working for a company that is building solutions used by small communities or minority groups? Would you mind working on a project that has a goal that could impact life of many people (ecology, medicine, etc)?

I worked for a fitness company for a few years and it was really nice helping people who wanted to workout and sometimes hearing the stories they'd share about using our platform to change their lives. But that job was the exception, not the rule. I find purpose before and after work, and on payday, when I take care of my family.

The incentive in the private sector may be profit, but look at the progress and good for the world that the private sector has created over last 400 years. Public sector has aided in that too, but the explosion in innovation that has occurred since the advent of private enterprise is hyper exponential on the scale of human history.

People are driven by a desire for mastery, or the enjoyment of their colleagues and/or customers, or the actual impact of the work.

The fact that most businesses aren't saving the world, they are just making money is why so many pretend to be about saving the world. See: Silicon Valley's episode in season 1 about TechCrunch Disrupt.

I work in professional open source, I find it fulfilling.

It's funny, I read this question and thought back to my time working for the government (military). One thing I really hated about it was the waste-- especially watching money being spent just to ensure the budget grew annually. I like the efficiency of the private sector.

My purpose, identity, and worth have nothing to do with my work. Work is something I do in exchange for money which I use to fund my life and goals. I've never been able to relate with someone who needs a purpose to do work. I would gladly hop to any job that paid more and required less effort than software

There are a lot of cool private companies, especially tech-focused ones, working to disrupt the public sector bureaucracy you’re describing. Might be worth exploring those options?

I work at https://payitgov.com. Would be happy to chat more about it

If you want a “sense of purpose” have children. Your job seems like the wrong place to expect purpose from, because for most of us work serves the primary purpose of providing an income, which is often contrary to our personal desires.

> Where do you find your sense of purpose working in the private sector?

Helping people is what works for me. You can help people at different scales and in different ways in the private sector. These people could be your teammates or your customers.

Today is my last day at a public sector job and I'd ask the same question in reverse. At least in the public sector you can be honest and say you and there to make a living.

I worked at a national lab for 5 years and loved it, but I know exactly how you feel about the negative parts. I left and ended up at an ad-tech company and although I didn't like our mission at all, enjoyed the job just because of all the new skills I learned. Eventually I had to leave because I just never could feel good about what we were building.

Then I ended up at my current company. Our mission is to improve supply chains by monitoring vaccines (mostly in Africa at the moment) and perishable goods with our sensor devices. Especially with the vaccines, our mission is literally to save lives. I LOVE it here.

So, the private companies you are looking for are out there, so maybe just stay patient until you find something that you can feel good about.

I get my sense of purpose from my family - my wife and daughter - and not my career. Work is something I do to enable the other parts of my existence.

You don’t. More than twenty years in and I’m certain that “passion” and “purpose” are gilded carrots used to misinform and sway the naive when used by capitalists. You won’t find purpose in a capitalist society.

You’re more likely to find a decent trade of your time, skills, and social connections for money, stock options, bonuses, and a benefits plan.

Treat it like a mercenary and you’ll do okay.

Now that isn’t to say that you, an individual, cannot find you own passions and purpose. These come from within and you won’t find them validated in a capital market. Know what they are and try to align your opportunities with them when you can and you can go pretty far.

As the saying goes, work to live vs live to work

I like to mix art and technology, the product is used by many people to create inspiring stories. I work in Visual Effects.

"the bureaucracy, the aversion to change, and the outdated technology" exist just as much in the private sector.

I don’t find a sense of purpose from my work

Many decades ago I used to work for an outfit that created operations management solutions which in turn enabled banks to streamline ATM services and phone companies to easily manage pay phones. It even allowed Disney to provide a better customer experience at their theme parks! As a result of this software both ATMs and pay phones proliferated. (If you're old enough remember when pay phones started appearing at every gas station and you could drive up to them?) In the end one could literally see how their software was improving the day-to-day lives of others.

Next I worked for a manufacturing automation outfit. Our solutions helped streamline manufacturing operations and made it quick and easy to reconfigure a line to manufacture a variant. One of our more well-known customers who makes diapers used our system to manufacture several different diaper varieties off the same line. This improved manufacturing efficiency which lowered manufacturing costs and the savings in turn were split between the investors and the customers. Your diapers are cheaper to buy, investors are making more money, manufacturing is staying in the United States and local communities are getting more tax revenue. It's a win all the way around.

For the past couple of decades I've been working for a public utility providing electricity. While my work doesn't directly involve the generation of electricity, I do work to make sure that electricity is generated as efficiently as possible. Being a regulated utility those savings are split between the investors and the customers (the regulators manage that). I also work to inform customers of any abnormal situations with their service, which is typically an outage. We now provide customers the means to determine what's going on and when their power will be restored. Seeing how electrical power is the bedrock of modern civilization I see this as very important work.

Bottom line - I've worked in private industry my entire 30+ year career and I've always been working to improve people's lives. Yes, it is profit-driven but the goal is to improve efficiencies and split the savings with the customer. Everybody wins.

THAT is what you're looking for - opportunities to save people time or especially save them money or provide them a service they've never had before. Remember, making money isn't the point of a business anymore than breathing is the point of living. Yes, a business must make money to stay in business just as you must breath in order to stay alive, but the point of living isn't just to breath. When you interview see if your business understands this and if they don't, move on. Don't waste your time with people thinking the whole point of being in business is to make money.

Got a resume? Or a list of what type of work you'd like to do? Things you'd like to learn?

Kids + wife.

I work in order to provide for them. Otherwise I’d be off running around the woods or something fun.

by definition work/material world does not bring fullfilment !!!

In my open source work.

Meaning van also be found by working for a cooperative. After a six-month period to check that the new hire fits well with others cooperators, he/she get a vote in the general assembly.

One person = one vote. All benefits each year are split into 3 equal parts. 1 for bonus, 1 kept to prevent difficult times ahead, 1 for investment.

The bonus is optional, for example if a majority agrees that a large investment is necessary or because there is economic incertitudes (covid-related by example).

The general assembly works like shareholders. Democracy prevails but a firm still needs leadership and a structure. Each cooperative mist chose the one the want and/or need. It can be a classic hierarchy or a holacracy, just a matter of efficiently and preferences.

Meaning: the day-to-day operations are not the matter of the general assembly, which meets once or twice a year - more if really urgent, superior necessity.

Salaries are public but they don't have to be the same. When everyone understands the economics of the firm, the salary is far less an issue. If one feels that one's work is unrecognized, eg underpaid, it can be discussed openly. That one may leave the coop of the disagreement persists.

In all cases, by moral principle, the lowest salary must be decent in regard to cost of livings. And the top salary can't psychologically go beyond three or four fold the lowest.

The gain in spirit is huge. People are happy and motivated both by the shared challenge and the prospect of equal sharing of the profits each year.

However, it's not a magical panacea. It implies a mandatory non-violent communication course far all, ponctual intervention of external mediator and ... getting rid of unfit personalities (or pathological ones such as pervert-narcissist, unredeemable self-entitled, misogynists, racists...).

Well, if one is deeply conservative, one can join an conservative coop, at least in theory. => this is the whole point of coops: join people you will be happy to work with.

I'm rather intellectual and I need interesting-to-me work, otherwise I get bored and hop to another job. Still, the coop way of working provide a lot of satisfaction and can be super interesting if you invest in working on yourself on how to communicate well with others and going further into understanding of psychology of a group.

Maybe at some point, one will want to go back to cutting-edge technology: that's totally understandable.

Whatever the newly-joinef firm, classic or coop, what one will have learnt in the coop will be super helpful, both in career (which will be accelerated) and joy in life. Even at home, non-violent communication and democratic decision-making with leadership (here as a parent) will help.

There are some true coops working on cutting-edge technologies. Many of them don't advertise it though, because of prejudices of potential clients. A client doesn't need to know of your coop way of working.

Having a prior experience in a coop makes you much more likely to be hired by another coop, evidently.

People grow up in coops ; the sense of belonging give meaning ; sharing profits instead of fuelling the capture of wealth by the richests too.

For liberal spirits as well as true-Christian spirits (eg not Tea Party Evangelical reactionary but rather influenced by St-Francis of Assisi), the principle of limiting the gap of salaries, equally sharing the profits, and democracy in general assemblies) provide a huge amount of meaning to work.

It's like two friends helping each other painting their own houses rather than doing it alone. Happiness and bonding instead of a pain in loneliness.

In the private sector, you can know whether what you are producing is an effective use of capital, because people voluntarily give up their money in exchange for your product or service. If you can't profit, you know that you are not making productive use of capital.

This isn't necessarily the case in the public sector. You don't have the same price signals to give a real metric on whether the work you are doing is actually productive. For all you know, it could be a giant waste of taxpayer money. Because the government usually monopolizes whatever product or service it is providing, there is often nothing to compare it to to inform you whether the capital is being used effectively, and the money itself is sourced involuntarily from taxpayers. Would your creditors really want to pay for what you are doing, if given the choice, and are you certain that the private sector could not provide it in a more cost-effective way for the taxpayer if they weren't prevented by regulation?

Profit should not be looked upon negatively. If you are profiting, and you are not a tax cheat, you are contributing positively to the public purse. In the public sector, you may not be contributing to the public purse, but subtracting from it. While the work you do MAY be worth this subtraction (strong MAY here because it certainly isn't given or even measurable), it is markedly different from adding to public funding, whilst at the same time providing a good or service that people voluntarily pay for and which can improve their standard of living.

Consider a $50k earner paying 20% income tax. In government, this earner is taking $40k from the public purse. They pay $10k tax, but this payment is a bit of a gimmick because it was sourced from the public purse to begin with. It didn't increase the public purse. In the private sector, the $50k earner is adding $10k to the public purse. Thus, for every $50k earner in government, it takes the entire income tax of four $50k earners in the private sector just to pay the salary (and that's without the layers of bureaucracy which skim from that amount first).

Consider how this feels from the perspective of the private sector worker. They have a higher job risk than the government worker. This is because the private sector worker must be productive enough and provide services that people voluntarily pay for to make profit, whereas there exists no such requirement in government because there is a perpetual supply of money regardless of 'results'. On top of that, a big portion of their earnings are then taken away to pay just 1/4 of the salary for the government worker with the cushy, secure job and a nice pension, whose work it is not even possible to determine is cost-effective and beneficial to society.

Imagine you are on a deserted island with 4 other people, you can each catch an average of 5 fish per day. One person declares themselves to be "island boss". You and your 3 other survivors must give the boss one of your 5 fish every day. As a consequence of you feeding "boss", he gets to decide everything you are allowed or not allowed to do on the island, with increasingly restrictive rules, some of which make your task of catching 5 fish every day more difficult. Because you each need to eat 4 fish a day, you cannot build up capital which would afford you time to do things other than fishing. You are merely surviving.

I dunno, but my moral compass thinks work-for-profit is very ethical and work-from-profit-of-others much less. It may be the case that the public sector job is worth the money, but I would much rather voluntarily pay for things than be forced to pay for many things which I find distasteful.