Comment by dmje | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmje | Hacker News Reader

I've taken a different angle. I work in a non-aggressive sector. It's very niche - my sector is museum technology - but I'd imagine it holds true for other non-profits.

Sounds weird that I can generalise like this but I've got 10+ years under the belt and I can say hand on heart that I've had maybe 3 "slightly difficult" clients in all this time. I've dipped out into the commercial world about once and almost instantly was bombarded with assholes, so retreated back into the place I know and love.

My figuring is this: the people who work for them aren't there to get rich - salaries are pretty crappy - they're there because they're fascinated in wonderful things and histories. So that endless bullshit drive to focus entirely on making vast sums of money is largely (not entirely!) removed. On the whole the sector is thoughtful, kind, considered. As a result (or because of!), it's a sector with excellent diversity, lots of working mums, lots of older people, lots of enthusiasm, lots of drive.

I'm never gunna get rich because museums aren't rich. But I do varied, fascinating work and the people I work with are almost always nice people. That to me is a huge thing and has positively affected my mental and working life.

OTOH, sometimes “passion” industries like say education are not only politicized to the extreme (given outcomes matter to so many people) but also are fundamentally on a shoestring budget, wanting as much as possible for as little as possible. This may be a function of governments being involved, but I struggle to think of more laid back industries. Entertainment has been a decent industry as well, but most of the “tech” is on the money driven side and less on the creative side.

Because pursuing creative, passion industries often do not pay the bills (due to oversupply or labour gatekeeping). Game developers being exhibit A. For non software engineering examples, look at traditional engineering and STEM. Most aerospace engineers start out with dreams of human space travel, they will either end up building missiles and drones, pivot, or work for one of Elon's passion companies that are infamous for their work life balance. People enter life science with the intention of becoming doctors yet most will be stuck with debt and a dead end job after graduation with medicine being forever out of reach. Teaching and non-tenured/non-STEM academia pays so badly (not to mention the incredible gatekeeping to even get the job) that you will probably find more English graduates on OnlyFans than your local college's literature department. Writing JavaScript apps is hardly the most meaningful job but it is a safe career path with good growth for current roboticists or electrical engineering graduates. Software engineering may be materialistic and CRUD apps boring, but they are an easy, uncontroversial way to pay the bills for the massive pool of STEM (and occasional non-STEM) talent we have right now.

> 1. You can Only Work for People That you Like.

> This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realized that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

From graphic designer Milton Glaser’s essay, Ten Things I Have Learned

I've had the same experience. It seems that people that truly love what they do are the best clients to have. The worst are when you get someone random in the company that's been assigned to deal with the project, and they have no interest and just feel it's an added responsibility to everything else they are already disinterested in doing.

This is completely true for me too - I work in the Charity/non profit sector building websites. Nobody is getting rich, and for the most part people enjoy what they do and find it meaningful, it’s a good atmosphere

Thank you very much for your story.

My small work experience made me start to think that the problems in most jobs is that it fails to provide a few core needs and thus everything collapses. People stay there because rent implies regular checks but they hate everything and it becomes a shark pool. People will fight not to click on a mouse. This is all because of depressive work context. Doesn't take much to make people joyful and thus just motivated enough and bring fluid daily lives back.

Thanks for this, it is quite eye opening and id love to work for clients like that.

Thanks for the inspiring post. I have to start looking for a job so, I will try to consider applying to less commercial places with maybe less money.

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