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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

"if what you do at work provides real value"

My company makes things that are, I'd argue, a net good to the world (we help make stuff more secure) - but honestly I find myself struggling more and more to care about anything that isn't addressing the climate or democratic breakdown the world faces.

Not rhetorical - genuine question: Does anyone else sit at their desk and think "but guys the ship is sinking, maybe we should worry about fixing the holes before we repaint the tennis court? guys? GUYS????"

This is my problem really, not the company's, but I'm not sure what to do.

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I work for environmental nonprofits that also lobby for government intervention. This sector does not pay as well as private industry, so does not have the best people money can buy. Sure we can use your money, but truly, what we need most is extremely talented and capable people who can take those donations and change the world.

I can see clearly from the resumes on my desk that when it comes right down to it, people would rather make big sacrifices to work for a game developer than a nonprofit.

Sometimes it's not always about pay. I was in consulting, then took a salaried job at a University. It was a 10% pay cut, but to compensate for that they offered 3 additional weeks of vacation (five total).

There's always different things you can negotiate on to bring on great talent.

> It was a 10% pay cut, but to compensate for that they offered 3 additional weeks of vacation (five total).

Hell country.

Been there and done that in the academic word. Had 4 weeks of vacation, and the manager refused to approve vacation time until the week of.

I started informing that I'm going on vacation. And for doing interviews elsewhere, took "sick" days.

It was a horrible situation to say the least, but now I'm out of that toxic hellhole.

Bit ironic since I left the game industry about a year ago. If you'd like to elaborate I'm all ears, or happy to talk privately (see my profile).

In my spare time I created a real estate finding tool focused on bike and train routes, which I hope indirectly has helped interested people avoid car-centric commutes and lifestyles while not spending insane amounts of money to be in the hippest areas. Apparently it's been useful in my immediate neighbourhood, at least.

But, as everyone else here notes, I've got bills to pay (fewer than most if I'm honest, though) and for now am just trying to destroy some debt.

Do you have any advice/resources available for getting into or learning more about some of these nonprofit organizations?

First move to DC, where all organizations that lobby the government have an office. Then start applying at your favorites.

How / where do you advertise?

(NB: You''re not making it easy to find you here.)

Actually our HR advertises on the monthly HN jobs thread. We are also on Idealist.org, the best site for nonprofit recruiting. Plus we are a nationally known nonprofit and our jobs are listed on our website. If someone wants to save the world, they know where to find us.

I'm not connecting to my own LinkedIn, but we are listed here, and every organization could use your help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_and_cons...

I've had conversations about this with friends after choosing a similarly drastic change like that for myself.

What stops them is a combination of inertia, money and life change. It's not a trivial thing to quit your job and work somewhere else.

One major factor is that you will be taking a large pay cut and might have to move. For those with mortgages and family staying with their less fulfilling jobs makes more sense. for many people their family comes first.

Another issue is that the grass always appears greener.

I do wonder what an engineer at Facebook would tell themselves, I think it might increase empathy with workers who are in places which are being labeled as morally bankrupt. I have some idea but that if they did share their thoughts they would get downvoted and hated for exposing themselves.

I've mentioned it around here before, but I think this is the oft-unseen problem with artificially created scarcities (especially housing scarcities from NIMBYs).

Say you've got 10 people. 5 of them want to do (noble but lower paying thing) and 5 and want to do (meh to possibly sketchy high-paying thing).

If there are 10 homes, that's fine. Maybe the noble ones have simpler, less fancy houses, but they're still basically OK. They still have the basics of life. "I can do something good for humanity and forego some luxury" is something a lot of people might think.

If there are 5 homes, then only the ones who do sketch work can have them. "I can do something good for humanity and be homeless" is something far fewer people think.

This applies to other things where a person might want to voluntarily take in less income (couple with one person doing childcare, taking a career break to learn a new thing, etc.) and it's why creating these fake shortages sucks so much out of the human experience - you have to justify your endeavors in terms of the lost income, and how they'll affect your competitiveness.

I've found myself in this situation: I was working for a big bank and the conditions were excellent: good teammates, good manager, good pay.

At one point I couldn't stand the cognitive dissonance of watching all these videos/articles about climate change while working for a bank that had a negative contribution to these issues.

I decided to quit and go part-time. I still don't know how to contribute to the issues I care about and earn money at the same time. I'm searching but tbh it's hard and I'm not the only one in this case.

However, now I have more time to think about making the life changes to reduce my impact on the climate/environment: organize camping holidays in my home country vs flying abroad, optimizing my energy needs at home etc.

I'd prefer finding a job where I can do that at a bigger scale but in the meantime that helps

My solution is to do one thing, one even very small thing a week to help the meta problems. Writing letters to reps or calling, picking up trash around my neighborhood, or making some care packs for homeless people are all things that don’t take very long, and the difference in feeling like I’m doing something about it vs not has been liberating.

Honestly, it sounds like you may be watching too much news. If you feel there's an impending crisis (especially a worldwide "democratic breakdown"), then it's quite possible you're reacting emotionally to content that's designed to make you feel exactly that.

I recommend unplugging for 30 days before you make any decisions. Walk around and look at the world around you with your own eyes. Don't let the media influence major life decisions without at least purging it from your life a bit first. It can be surprising the effect it has on you.

Agree 100%. And make sure you are taking care of yourself properly before trying to fix the rest of the world.

Wouldn't unplugging and "looking at the world around you with your own eyes" provide a hopelessly narrow and biased slice of objective reality? Why should anyone expect their immediate, physically accessible surroundings and specific lived experience to generalize to entire societies, let alone the globe?

I'd recommend a deliberate analysis and culling of your information sources, not a complete disengagement.

No, I think it would help you engage in with your local community and ground your thinking in a very practical and meaningful reality. I think too many people are focusing on large scale abstract problems that don't actually have the impact on their life that it seems when you ingest too much media.

I wouldn't call it disengagement, I'd call it re-engagement with the real world.

Sure, and then the already privileged people on HackerNews end up continuing to blindly exploit the under-privileged in developing nation. That sounds like a horrible solution.

I think about this often from the perspective of my job in tech. I just started taking action by getting plugged in with the Citizen's Climate Lobby (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/) which are actually making a difference where it matters, and need volunteers. Take a look? They have weekly intro sessions to get you set up with taking meaningful action.

You can start by just switching your lifestyle.

I'm a remote worker, who will be moving to the semi-rural south in two weeks. My wife and I plan to use our half-acre to grow our vegetables and hunt/fish for all of our meat within three years; we will start immediately but want the transition to happen in gradual steps. Small local changes will aid the environment.

Are you open to chatting? Curious to compare notes. Moved to some land in Co. Offaly (middle of Ireland) in March. Partially inspired by The Market Gardener

Sure thing. Sent an email to the one listed on your profile.

How much time and money do you want to spend, decide that then do it. Worrying over what other people are doing is not helpfull.

I spend no time, and quite a lot of money on that problem.

What democratic breakdown? I'm fairly unplugged from politics, but the major things people seem to talk about (Trump, Brexit) at least in my area seem to be deeply rooted in democracy.

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