Comment by hereonout2

21 days ago

> knowing that the world would be worse off if you decided to switch gears and become a carpenter/baker/bartender/choose your adventure.

I don't understand what you're weighing this against? A job that is literally saving lives maybe, or really leading in a field of science or technology?

Most of us don't have that though, even here on hacker news. Most of us are part of a larger effort that will progress just as well without us, our personal impact is marginal at best.

I've worked in tech for two decades for a company I deem "moral" and I feel I've had impact. But I could have fitted kitchens or made wedding cakes for that time and had just as positive an impact on the world and people I serve professionally. Hell, if I was a carpenter my work could probably outlast anything I've done in tech.

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hereonout2

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BurningFrog  21 days ago

This is a point too rarely made.

Most work that produces something people are willing to pay for does make the world a better place!

Not enormously so for the vast majority of us, but what one person out of 8 billion can do.

  • hereonout2  21 days ago

    There's an aspect of longevity to our impact I love to contemplate.

    For most of us, our tech work will be long forgotten and obsolete 20 years from now. At best it will have provided some small intangible advance - hopefully for the better.

    But the people that built my house died before I was born, yet their work has a tangible ongoing impact to this day.

    The people who built some European cathedrals lived over 800 years ago, yet that padstone laid by some nameless apprentice still holds an entire functional building in place.

  • bumby  21 days ago

    I’m not sure I buy the premise as it reads as a Libertarian pipe dream. There are just too many examples of people willing to pay for something immoral or unethical to think that transactions can be broadly painted as a net good.

    Capitalist transactions are a reflection of value systems and our own shortcomings/biases. To the extent that humans are flawed, many of those transactions are going to be ethically flawed as well.