What are some examples of important work with decent pay in an inexpensive area that a SV tech worker could be good at?
Compound interest is the eigth wonder of the world.
Knowing what will be profitable in the future is analogous to knowing what problems will plague humanity.
And investing for future profit equates to mitigating them.
Alternatively you can work for one of the companies burning through VC money selling products/services at a loss who need to advertise those services so they can sell more and more quickly to create the illusion that one day they will be able to generate more than they spend! Don't worry too much about the loses the VCs will just make it up in their investments in advertising companies and companies selling infrastructure to advertising companies.
Huh, something sounds weird about that setup, well good thing money is cheap!
Well, just goes to show that sarcasm is always bad for factual debates.
I'll also say that the idea of "Make lots of money now and then I'll give back later and retire early and enjoy my life" is a very risky proposition, you never know what tomorrow might bring a car crash, cancer, who knows?
> And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee - Luke 12:15-20
Not saying this is your job of course, but there are PLENTY of non-profits in this world that are actively making the world worse off. Non-profit == good is just as bad as Profit == bad.
For an example, just look at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in LA. Some of the worst people in the country.
There are people working on robotics, working on medicine, biology, rockets, software for people’s real problems, tools to enable other businesses, all sorts of things.
Some urgent areas include assessing biological and climate tail risks.
Or are you suggesting there is only one set of things that universally matter to all humans?
Am I willing to take a 10% pay cut to work on things that are good for society instead of selling ads? Sure. 25%? Probably. But those aren't the magnitudes we're talking about. Total comp for a senior-to-staff level engineer at FAANG (or anyone competing with them) will be, let's say, 500k/year, plus best-in-the-world benefits. Total comp for government or charity work rarely cracks 100k, and even tech companies that are focused on good rather than profit, maybe 200.
And it's not like the FAANG jobs are bad - day-to-day, they're incredibly interesting. There's lots of fun stuff to build with smart people. The only problem is the background existential dread. It's also hard to argue that they're actively harming humanity in a lot of cases - maybe this line of reasoning works on potential Raytheon or Palantir employees, where the delta in morality is much greater, but convincing people to go from neutral-ish to good is harder than convincing them to go from bad to good.
So the question you're asking is, are you willing to take a 60-80% pay cut to possibly do a less interesting job, in exchange for moral fulfillment and knowing that you're helping humanity? You might think the answer is yes, but I think it's hard to fault people for whom it isn't.
The people who work at Raytheon or Palantir think they are less harmful than the people who work for Google/Facebook. Nobody who has decided to work there thinks they are just drone striking children.
Not enough people look at both sides of the ledger when it comes to the ethics and morals of their work.
Due to their long range HIMARS don’t have to be anywhere near the front line to be used. It’s pretty unlikely that any would be captured and even if it looked like they could be they could easily destroy them.
Did palantir do shady things ? I now that the CEO got in trouble for looking down on poor people ( or something along those lines ?), but is there more ?
It’s not exactly fair to criticize a company because of what they aren’t telling us, but that goes with the territory.
Not to criticize you directly, but just sharing this perspective.
But if I build up enough investment wealth to pay for my life in the future, I could take on more meaningful work in the future. If I leave for meaningful work now, I may be making money at that pay scale trajectory for the rest of my career, similar to how people who graduated in 2008 have never caught up to their peers wealth wise.
I think it comes down to control about your financial options. Relinquishing income puts you at a disadvantage.
They like the idea of doing something good, but not enough to sacrifice much for it.
I am the same way. I work on boring as heck ad tech and security stuff.
I could do much more interesting work, but I would make less. Interesting and beneficial to the world is even less.
I won’t even sacrifice pay for interesting.
This is the same with climate change. Emergency? Many will say so. Enough of an emergency not to fly to Thailand this winter or not buy a monster house? Nope.
I am the same way. I consider climate change a problem. But I’m also likely going to eat beef every day for the rest of my life in a meal or two.
I think many of us common folks have fairly low energy demands.
But, the same set that goes to Davos, and is preaching to us about cutting our consumption, is the same that has the private jet, 3 mansions and a football field sized yacht.
I'm so over the entitled elite telling us what to do.
It's always a balancing act though. I won't go to do a job I loathe, because I won't stick there for long enough. I choose jobs that I'm fine doing, and pass many jobs that I might love doing but which won't pay the bills.
I was fortunate enough to have a job I outright loved, and which also paid well; it lasted 3.5 years. I'm immensely happy to have had such luck.
Or not even the best, just average/competent enough scientists and engineers?
Phrased a little differently, would you accept being paid a life-changing amount of money in exchange for anonymously engineering a deadly threat to some people far from home and knowing you could get away with it? Would you let your morals stop you?
I simply think that the venn diagram of people willing to do software dev work for a defense contractor like Boeing or Raytheon and people willing to do software dev work for the cartels/terrorist groups is not even close to approaching a full circle.
Sure, most people willing to do software dev work for the cartels/terrorist groups are probably totally morally ok with doing work for a defense contractor. But I am willing to bet that most people willing to work for a defense contractor will not feel morally alright working for the cartels/terrorist groups even in the slightest.
The difference is that many or most won't cross borders to work for the opposing team.
ISIS has many engineers.
There is no “both sides” argument to working for a group that just wants to get filthy rich using brutal violence, bribery, and disregard for the downsides of hard drug addiction. The cartels don’t have a recruiting story of bringing justice to the oppressed, etc. It’s just opportunity for money and power for people with limited opportunities otherwise.
Totally orthogonal to recruiting for “mission focused” orgs like terrorist groups.
Two points.
You pivoted from terrorists to cartels. You clearly don’t realize that cartels actually get their info and their purpose from protecting (or at least doing enough visible work to appear to be protecting) the average person in their territory. Sure, not all cartels work this way, but even if not initially, they eventually buy their info this way.
And, yes, terrorist groups absolutely do try to claim they are fighting for justice. They are just targeting a different demographic than you have in your mind. The children of parents killed by US defense contractor weapons. The religious zealots convinced of whatever religious transgression. The clash of values. There are plenty of political platforms, and they all can be recruiting stories.
No I didn’t. Read the thread. It lumped both together.
Everything is awful, except for what pays your mortgage. The world is about shades of grey, not black and white.
That applies to all peddlers of moral indignation. The most strident patriots are usually pasty old men who bear no cost for their actions.
edit: this is even a problem for people who write FOSS (unfortunately leading to some of them putting moral clauses in licenses), never mind those taking a check from some of the worst people in the world.
In essence you're giving up most legal protections (since you've got as much to lose as anyone else if the police catch you) while working with people who likely have no moral issues with killing you. Will they pay you or will they kidnap your family and cut off someone's toe every time you complain?