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I agree on both points; government work can involve very little real work with no real stress of being fired. Similarly, doing meaningless work will destroy your soul and will make you hate your time in the office even more. I'd even go so far as to say caring deeply about your profession is a western value, and trying to work as little as possible is going to be difficult in a western country

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> doing meaningless work will destroy your soul

You think commercial software is meaningful? You think web apps, mobile apps, etc. are meaningful? If so, you are very lucky!

I do satellites now but when I worked in insurance the work we did was meaningful. People need insurance, their policies are stored as data, and the company had to manage millions of policies.

Increasing click-through rates may not feel meaningful, but writing unit tests for a satellite which has already launched and been decommissioned will eat your soul, and you likely won't become a better developer because of it since you won't be given a budget to improve things or try new tech.

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