Ask HN: How much does “purpose” matter in a job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much does “purpose” matter in a job?

10 pointsnull_shift18 comments

I am at a point in my career where I don’t really care about my work that much. I am successful, have full autonomy, get recognition, make more money than I need, I work on things that are intellectually stimulating, in a field that has some direct benefit to humanity. But still feel unsatisfied…

Many others in my field (aerospace) have a lifelong passion for it, but I don’t particularly care for it either way. I am envious of the enthusiasm they have for our work, that I cannot muster up.

There are other areas outside of my chosen profession that I feel more strongly about, and wondering if I should pursue those.

I feel like I have ascended up Maslow’s hierarchy of job needs, and now am faced with a lack of purpose in my work. So I am curious, has anyone changed jobs/careers to align with a greater sense of purpose? How has that gone for you?

View on HN

> I have ascended up Maslow’s hierarchy of job needs...

Then it's time to investigate other models of human personality, behaviour, and priorities for inspiration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEXACO_model_of_personality_st...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_five_model_of_pers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/why-you-are-who-you-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory_of_emotion

Chances are this is not about “purpose” and has nothing to do with the job itself, this is only about you.

Probably your motivation is/was not to fulfill your needs, but to get external approval (of parents, friends, important people etc), to reach some ideal picture you created for yourself etc.

Even now you’re asking for different pictures of other people in similar circumstances - to get external validation of possible solutions.

This is not the way to find internal drive.

Work this out with a good therapist. It’s helping me so far.

Its the only thing that matters to me. I am convinced that money is optimizing a quantity which is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

If you have a rich understanding of 'meaning' you should be maximizing that, and if that includes the accumulation of economic free energy (money), then do that. I urge people to make sure they are taking the proper time to analyze what they want out of life, and not just defaulting to dollar-maxxing because its what your parents told you to do.

How is money increasingly irrelevant? I'm thinking you gotta max money so that you have the breathing room to be able to move to meaning-mode. If you're living month to month, that's gonna clamp down on your ability to actualize.

> How is money increasingly irrelevant?

The more you have, the less relevant getting more is.

At least for me, once I was makimg 'enough' per year, earning more was nice, but I didn't actively seek it out. Finding work that made me feel good was more important (but, when I was starting out, getting a paycheck made me feel good, so the particular work wasn't as important). For me, enough was maxing 401k, making some extra mortgage payments, having a decent and growing emergency fund, and not worrying about regular expenses.

You need access to resources, so money will never be fully irrelevant to living a good life, until we are fully post scarcity.

In current society, if you have a house and an education, things are so easily available, then you can live a beautiful life on 15k a year (I do this right now, paying $950/m in LA). You could rightfully claim that housing is very essential, and is hugely expensive. However, houses are not actually expensive or difficult to make. Having a property in a certain desirable areas (which have been purposely prevented from expanding naturally) is the limiting factor. Also, IMO, a lot of property in desirable areas is in a bubble.

Regarding education, high level educations are increasingly becoming democratized through the internet. I have very high hopes for the future of education, where skilled teachers are able to make the highest quality content, made available for very low costs to millions. Having professors with doctorates was cool, because they meme-plexed information, but they were often limited on bandwidth. Search engines are making it increasingly easy to memeplex a field of knowledge without a hugely skilled person's assistance.

Non-profit organizations are frequently hotbeds of pathology.

If you work for, say, a for-profit restaurant, you might be working for a rich person but you are satisfying a real need in an ordinary person.

In a non-profit you might be working for

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/buffett-kin...

I think it matters quite a bit as a quality-of-life factor. I changed careers pretty late in life and I couldn't have been happier in terms of satisfaction and being excited to come in to work. It was a pay-cut for me. Tech still pays very very well.

At the same time, you have to find what makes you tick. If you want to keep making lots of money, I believe you don't get a lot of do-overs when it comes to switching careers. If you simply don't care about money, then you can keep switching and starting again from a junior position and work up to a senior/IC type role. That gets sorta tough when you have a family/mortgage (yada yada). If you have the freedom to explore alternate paths then go for it. Be sure to build a few bridges before you leave your industry though!

Unless you pull a Bezos (leaving an awesome job to win the biggest lottery of all time), you will regret leaving money on the table. When asked about the regret, you will say it was all worth it for some nebulous notion of fulfillment, which is all you can do dull the pain.

It is less about hitting it big, more about fulfilling a purpose / doing something meaningful with my life’s work.

I suppose I am looking toward my job to provide that level of fulfillment, when it could conceivably come from elsewhere.

>it could conceivably come from elsewhere

Hit the nail right on the head.

My boss is a boy scout troop leader, he regularly goes out to the gatherings, and I can relate his mood to how their last meetup went. His job has 0 impact on it.

Keep looking, something will fill that void soon.

I, myself, found that making bread for community kitchens sorta did it, not the act of making it but seeing people eat it, and taste it, was very fulfilling. You don't have to do it for charity, there may be other things that tickle your fancy.

Yeah but let's say your job is dumb and you have enough saved up. Maybe spend 6 months just putzing around a bit to see what a fresh take on life gives you?

If you have the financial luxury to do so, start by spending some time doing nothing.

You are unlikely to discover what you truly want if you are in a position where you can't help but define it in terms of what you a moving away from.

Given that you're in aerospace, could you get to work on electric or hydrogen planes, and re-frame your work as trying to save the planet? ( Since people just refuse to stop flying, we need non fossil-fuelled planes ASAP IMHO). I mean, we're in a desperate situation with the climate, would working on this crisis transcend the lack of motivation you have?

I'm right there with you null_shift. I am considering a career change that might have more interaction with people than hiding behind a computer all day.

You need to make money or “purpose” won’t matter. If you have to have a boring job to make money, do that and find purpose in your free time.

Unless the job is too boring or too long. A job you don’t love or even like is acceptable, but a job you hate isn’t worth it. Or you really think you have a better opportunity.

I can't really think of a purposeful tech job that doesn't pay comfortably. There are plenty of purposeless jobs that pay terribly though. It might be different for certain other jobs like being a teacher or nurse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com