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when I graduated CMU, in a speech the head of the CS department told us [paraphrased] to work on things that matter and to be a force for good in the world.> I never felt like I've accomplished that. I also don't know what I would work on if I did have the means to chase some deep work without worrying about money.
Oh hey, I remember something like that when I graduated too, CMU 2015, and I remember walking away thinking the same thing: "well, how the hell am I supposed to do that?"
Turns out I had a lot of work to do. I spent the next 6 years reading philosophy and psychoanalysis to try and figure out my own shit and understand the world better, which I felt I had learned almost none of at CMU (that said, there's some benefit to being a blank slate, in that I can follow my intuition rather than imitating my professors, but lack of mentorship makes it hard to get started). Being able to support myself through development work was significant in giving me the stability and flexibility to pursue that sort of research in my free time.
This was a big influence for me quitting my job at big corporate and joining a small startup founded by a friend (at the cost of a big salary hit), and eventually I want to move on from that and work on more self-directed activities that even more closely relate my (still developing!) philosophical views and my abilities. But it took a very long time for me to "find myself" and what I believed, even on a very basic level. I had no idea of any of that after graduating, besides some gut feelings about the current moment in political discourse (which themselves took several years to understand fully).
I always wonder about a lot of my peers, who didn't seem to take the same path, and instead continue working their jobs without thinking too hard. Will they find themselves 20 years down the road unsatisfied with where they ended up? Or will they not think too hard about it, and enjoy their day to day lives without much tension, besides the occasional political event? It sometimes seems more a matter of temperament than anything. But it is weird to see the "best and brightest" end up working for a company like Palantir because "we're all nerds here!", without taking any sort of stance on the value of their work.