I'm lucky enough to work on problems that I find interesting, important, and personally challenging. I optimize for this at the expense of salary and stability. One of the biggest things that's helped me in a cultural safety net of believing that this is OK, with a network of people that help me out. I think there's also enormous potential for individuals to reinforce the values they think will define work in the right way.
- Can you support your friends when their companies attack their work/life balance? Can you help them come up with ways to fight back without hurting their careers?
- Can you share information that's not typically public, in order to help others make better decisions? Salary to peers is an easy place to start. Harder is telling younger folks what Sales Engineers and Product Managers do (and how it can be really fun, fulfilling, and lucrative!).
- Can you normalize behaviors that benefit workers at the expense of companies? Unions used to be great, but I personally think they're the wrong tool for the problems of 2017. Working from home 2 days a week shouldn't break any team, but it's still a cultural taboo.
I'll admit that these are pretty 1st-world problems and I can't do much for people outside of Bay Area tech, but Bay Area tech is where I live and work. We can't change where we are right now, but there's a pile of small problems that are right on your doorstep that you can shove in the right direction. I think there's more ground to be won there than trying to overhaul the whole system.
We overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in a decade ;)
Aside: I disagree somewhat with the framing as a Wicked Problem. That method seems to deliberately conflate multiple problems, in order to make the discussion more sweeping. I think there's value to breaking down "Work" into smaller, more tractable problems. That aside, there's a lot of meat on this bone, so it's good to acknowledge that.