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Comment by elephanlemon | Hacker News Reader

Don’t agree with most of these comments. Not wanting to work at a company that makes some uninteresting business product just a little more profitable does not mean that you are depressed. Working at a place like that can certainly make you depressed though!

To the OP, I think you have a few options. On one hand you can keep taking short jobs / consulting or try to build some sort of simple SaaS business that you can just maintain. Alternatively you can try to find work that is meaningful to you - perhaps at a nonprofit or government job, or by building your own company or organization.

On a related note, I recommend reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger, which goes into great detail on how western society is arguably terribly unfulfilling.

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For sure. Some people are ok with doing arbitrary tasks for the powerful as long as the money is good. Others of us, me included, care about actual impact on users and the world.

I remember interviewing one very sharp engineer who was desperate to get out of Facebook. He had been attracted by the exciting problems, but after a few years he was entirely sick of spending most of his time trying to shift metrics by fractions of a percent. Metrics whose only real meaning was, at best, increasing the money flowing into Facebook. And all of that was years before the recent revelations on the dangers FB poses and how little they care about that.

My current solution to this problem has been to work for an effective not-for-profit. It still has its problems, but my colleagues at least care about actual impact, and I'm still excited for the chance to make a dent in problems I care about.

(As an aside, I'll note that it's also possible to find meaning in commercial work. I love building things for users, and I'm happy to charge for them when we're creating real value. But given American managerial culture, user benefit is often at best a side effect at many companies.)

Basing your happiness from your work life is a recipe for unhappiness. You will always find something to nitpick about

Agree. Find hobbies, social circles outside of work etc. Work is just so that you can afford to live. I don't think having a "boring" work is a problem, as long as the work I do is ethical I don't care that much what I do for living.

Only if you fail. It is entirely possibly to seek out and find a meaningful job that gives you satisfaction.

This is shifting the blame to the depressed

Doesn't sound like OP has thought of this tack yet. Nor is it easy to pull off even if you do try. I'm just saying it's possible.

Work satisfaction is a large component of happiness, as we spend a lot of our time at work (nearly half our waking hours). It's important not to neglect other aspects of your life and base your self-worth and happiness on work alone, but it's important to ensure you are happy at work.

Every statement you made is completely subjective.

If you added 'For myself' at the beginning it would make more sense as an argument.

Assuming others feel the same about work, or that they only spend half their waking time there is pretty short-sighted.

I, for one, place no worth on a person by what they do, or what I do, to make a living.

As far as I'm concerned, we are not our jobs, and I am sure quite a few people are living their lives with unfulfilled potential because they will never be given the opportunity to find out what they are truly good at or capable of. They are spending most of their lives trying to survive while making the rich richer.

To me it's a sad state of affairs all the way around.

I agree, but i would phrase it contrarily, as this much more common - work dissatisfaction is often a large component of unhappiness.

Absolutely. Work dissatisfaction has the potential to disrupt other aspects of quality of life, including interpersonal relationships, especially if it's not addressed for a long time.

We spend a lot of our time working, enough to affect our general state of mind. A lot of people in a high demand occupation would sacrifice a high salary for happier conditions.

> I recommend reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger

I think there were some helpful ideas in that book, but also the author took a lot of liberty in the interpretation of data he cited.

For example, he spends a lot of time discussing lower rates of reported suicide at wartime, as if people go around attributing suicide as a cause of death to bodies they discover in a war zone. Or that someone who loses their life acting reckless in battle must be is inherently a happier person than someone who takes their own life some other way.

> Not wanting to work at a company that makes some uninteresting business product just a little more profitable does not mean that you are depressed.

That's not all we know about OP though.

Anything that harms your ability to live happily can be considered a disease.

Not being able to work at 99% of the companies that employ your profession is arguably something that harms your ability to live happily.

Or they could have just chosen a profession they don’t like?

Apparently so!

Maybe it's the desire to stick with a profession you hate in practice is caused by some kind of disease.

There is no evidence they have such a desire. In fact the opposite is true.

Why you want to find disease here is unclear.

There is evidence, they literally said they feel unable to work at 99% of the jobs in the field they’re attempting to participate in.

The continued attempt (this post) does not align with the inability to perform the job in nearly any capacity.

You are misrepresenting the OP.

They clearly distinguish between great jobs and not great jobs.

They ask for advice on either finding great jobs, or tolerating not great jobs.

This is quite obviously not the behavior of someone who is continuing to do something they hate. They are asking how to find a job they don’t hate, or how to not hate a job they find. This is the opposite of what you are claiming them to be doing.

If they can’t find a way to do either of these two things and they keep working in the field, then you might have a point. But right now they are asking the obvious and sensible questions that a healthy person experiencing dissatisfaction with their career should ask.

Your attempt to portray them as diseased still makes no sense.

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