Anyone feel like they are positively impacting society?

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Turbulent-Week1136@reddit

I give zero fucks whether or not I'm contributing positively to society. Why is this a concern at this point? As long as I'm not writing software to send people to death camps or harvesting their organs I'm happy doing whatever keeps me employed.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Why is positively contributing to society a concern? lol

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Turbulent-Week1136@reddit

What job in tech do you genuinely think is going to be contributing to society?

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I don’t know, surgical robotics? Clean energy?

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Turbulent-Week1136@reddit

Which clean energy? The solar panels that poison the earth with the chemicals required to build them? Or the wind turbines that massacre hundreds of birds a day?

Surgical robots that hospitals use to make medical card unaffordable?

See, it's turtles all the way down.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

So what year was the last “good” thing invented? Cars pollute, printing press leads to misinformation, wheels lead to war

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youngggggg@reddit

Tech is full of guys like this unfortunately. Good on you for caring OP

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FatefulDonkey@reddit

Nope. Unless you work for a non profit, you're actually not benefiting society.

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alpacaMyToothbrush@reddit

Or donate to a well ran charity

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

If someone is working on a battery that runs on dirt and it’s awesome then how is that not benefitting society ?

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likeittight_@reddit

Does such a thing exist? No. But do you know what does exist? ai that consumes resources at astonishing rates.

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FatefulDonkey@reddit

It's just a vehicle for making money. If someone really wants to benefit humanity, they will give those batteries to 3rd world countries and also provide recycling programs, etc etc.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I think it’s possible to make money and provide real value

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FatefulDonkey@reddit

Don't get me wrong. There is real value. But the aim is making money, not benefiting humanity.

Take the phone for example. If people actually wanted to benefit humanity, they would have made it so it's not addictive, maybe options to lock notifications, etc. But the addiction brings money

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EnderMB@reddit

I shared this story a while back, but I worked on a few "tech for good" projects, and many of them have been probably ethically worse than some of the stuff I've worked on for megacorps. Some highlights:

My first ever client project, with a charity, early in my career. I went in to fix a simple CMS issue and discovered that customer credit card details were stored in plain text in their db. That was a fun discussion, especially describing how unbelievably bad this is for their business.
Worked for several charities that will happily burn through money because "we'll just fundraise to bridge the gap".
Worked for some specific charities with what I will call "colourful language" relating to who they're protecting. Imagine someone from a children's charity making a dead kid joke in a project meeting, or someone laughing at disabilities who works for a charity that supports people with specific disabilities/illnesses.
I worked on a work wellness app, fixing some issues another dev had made. There was a bug, and the owner decided to publicly call me out on LinkedIn, calling me incompetent, and stating that no one should ever employ me. My employer got lawyers involved very quickly, and the owner had to remove all references, and publicly apologise to me and admit fault. The kicker was that the bug was unrelated to my changes.

I've worked on some great stuff that has genuinely helped people, but I'm at what I'd call a "net negative" with ethical tech.

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alpacaMyToothbrush@reddit

I just work for whoever pays well and donate to effective charities.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I’ve also had some not great experiences working for a non-profit that was ostensibly trying to do good

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alpacaMyToothbrush@reddit

I max out my company's 'charitable match' every year. I'm not making a damned bit of difference in the world with my code, but I'm pretty certain my money has made a real impact.

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yoda_babz@reddit

Not strictly a dev - I'm a data scientist building software for modelling risks to national infrastructure networks from extreme weather events and climate change. The energy, water, telecoms, etc industries have been making noise for ages that they have no visibility of the ways that failures in their networks have downstream impacts on other infrastructure sectors. They plan investment and upgrades based on impacts within their own systems, but currently can't estimate what other systems are at risk, or how they are at risk from failures in upstream systems. So we're working to connect these systems up and provide analysis software that allows them to consider this in their investment planning and regulatory reporting.

In a beta project it's sometimes hard to see what our immediate or likely impact is, but there's no denying our whole Dev team feels like we're positively impacting society.

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particulareality@reddit

I work in security and I might not feel im having a noteworthy positive impact, but I definitely don’t lose sleep about it being negative.

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Ok-Satisfaction4421@reddit

but I definitely don’t lose sleep about it being negative

This is exactly why I avoid gambling or crypto positions. I constantly have recruiters from both in my inbox and could seemingly double my income, but I doubt I could live with what I knew I was enabling.

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mailed@reddit

same. working on critical infrastructure is how I feel better about myself

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stormdelta@reddit

Similar for me. I work for a company who does security-related products that fill a need any large org would have.

At this point, I consider it a win that I can get paid well without making the world worse.

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Environmental_Leg449@reddit

My previous role in security definitely felt a little mass-surveilancey, which wasn't great. My current gig feels much more bureaucratic and less possibility of contributing to evil

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tomqmasters@reddit

I'm in a similar boat with the mass surveillance. Where did you move too? I keep getting defense company recruiters but I don't really want to do that.

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Environmental_Leg449@reddit

I work for a SIEM vendor. It's kinda surveillance-y in its own way, but i don't feel that bad about spying on what employees are doing on their corp machines. Plus most of what I'm looking at anyway is logs from Cloud Providers or SaaS tools, now your browser history

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boofaceleemz@reddit

Not the person you asked, but VM is a generally beneficial-to-society area to work in. Pay isn’t great though.

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boofaceleemz@reddit

Same here. I’m a cog in a run down hacked together barely functioning machine, but it’s a machine that defends people and their privacy so I’m happy to be part of it.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I feel the same way, it would be good to have a positive view though

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RedKroker@reddit

In one of my internship I worked on a pretty cutting-edge (at the time at least) 3D scanning software for orthodontists, which they used to replace clay molds when taking measurements for a set of braces. It was a big quality of life upgrade for both the doctor and patient, and definitely one of the place I worked where I felt I was making someone's life better!

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Organic_Battle_597@reddit

I work for a company that enables some of the least popular businesses in the world to operate. I don't directly work on customer facing software, I do network/internal tooling software, but still, it is supporting the company that enables the parasitic businesses.

Yes, I would like to find a gig that had me working somewhere I felt like I was making a positive difference in society. If not directly by my own work, at least enabling the organization.

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LongUsername@reddit

I've certainly tried to work at places I could be proud of.

I've worked Medical, Industrial, Lighting, and now Industrial Security.

Are they all 100% positive to society? No. The stuff I worked in with healthcare probably drove up costs (expensive MRI machines) and now I work with a lot of mining/oil/gas companies.

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bl4h101bl4h@reddit

Why do you think MRI machines aren't a positive contribution?

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LongUsername@reddit

I didn't say it wasn't positive, but that even when you work on something generally positive there are sometimes negative side effects.

We were pushing more expensive, powerful machines into hospitals when they could probably have gotten 95%+ the same benefit from a much cheaper model. The increased cost of healthcare technology has to be paid somewhere and that usually ends up being paid by insurance companies, who then pass it along in premiums.

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RegularAd9643@reddit

Can you explain more?

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3pieceSuit@reddit

Ive worked for healthcare software companies for 12 years and I feel like my work is a net positive. Helping doctors improve efficiency.

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alex88-@reddit

The US healthcare system is evil though.100% a for-profit system.

Building efficiency actually = helping doctors meet bullshit insurance patient panel requirements to get paid more. Aka unnecessary bureaucracy that provides little benefit to the patient and is purely to generate profit.

The US outspends the next highest country in healthcare costs by an unreasonable margin, yet we’re not even in like top 50 in the world in patient outcomes. Sorry if this feels negative, I’m quite jaded after working in healthcare extensively.

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likeittight_@reddit

Uncomfortable truth. Profiteering is profiteering. Nobody is saying you can’t do it, but you gotta own it.

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likeittight_@reddit

And yet costs continue to rise faster than inflation. You’re kidding yourself

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RegularAd9643@reddit

I feel like efficiency can mean that they are able to treat more patients with their limited number of doctors. And in that way it’s possible for efficiency to increase even as costs increase?

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likeittight_@reddit

It’s 2026 so you can feel however you want, telling someone else how to feel is ground for pearl clutching. However, there is no evidence whatsoever that the medical industry is somehow increasing efficiency. Efficiency continues to drop, accessibility drops, costs rise.

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/health-policy-101-health-care-costs-and-affordability/?entry=table-of-contents-introduction

I’m not telling anyone they can’t make money. Capitalism says have at it. But don’t pretend you’re “part of the solution” while inequality increases and the planet burns.

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3pieceSuit@reddit

What is your point?

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CrazyFaithlessness63@reddit

I started my career in embedded systems and industrial control and monitoring (power distribution and then RF testing equipment). It wasn't world changing work but the focus was on safety and reliability so there was a sense of satisfaction that I was helping to keep the core infrastructure that people depending on available and safe to use. Power was available to turn on your heater in winter or air conditioner in summer, phone reception was good so you could call emergency numbers when you needed to or just keep in touch with friends and family.

I jumped around a bit mid career, some government contract work (which was pretty much the low stakes and bureaucratic environment you describe) which wasn't actively negative but incredibly frustrating because progress was so slow. I even worked for an EGM (electronic gaming machine, slot machines essentially) company for a while. I only lasted there a year, despite being challenging and interesting intellectually it was actively hurting their customers. When we went on site visits and saw people pushing their entire salary or pension through a machine in a matter of hours that was enough for me.

The final 10 years I spent at a web based company (large website, millions of daily visitors) which did offer an useful service (not essential, but certainly made peoples lives easier). My role was mainly developer support, building tools and services to help the developers improve the site which felt pretty good. I wasn't helping 'society' as such but at least I was improving the lives of that group of people. What got to me in the end was the 'improvements' they were making were less about improving things for the customer and more about extracting every last cent they possibly could through advertising, engagement and upselling. I was happy to retire after that.

I'm not sure it's possible to work in any industry and feel like it has a purely positive impact, everything has a trade off.

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David_AnkiDroid@reddit

Absolutely. I'd wager ~70% of US med students use an Anki client.

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hinano@reddit

☝️💯🙌

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HeckXX@reddit

In the presence of an absolute legend

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OliveYuna@reddit

I've been using your app for years and have mastered Spanish (C2 certificate) and Portuguese (C1, probably) and am now working on French. You are doing God's work.

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mrfoozywooj@reddit

I work for a company that supposedly makes a difference and in a way we do.

my day job goes like this.

meet a bunch of govt people who cannot tie their shoes and are functionally unemployable.
I do their job for them.
the taxpayer actually gets a somewhat quality service.

its made me a bit disillusioned though ive worked at every level of govt and never encountered a single person with even middling intelligence, all of the real work is outsourced to people like me.

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internetroamer@reddit

0 impact

Many things I built got scrapped, features without much users or dumb simple stuff as part of an assembly line of tickets across so many devs your contribution is negligible

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squarlo@reddit

I used to work on an internal application for insurance companies. Didn’t feel great about it, but it was my first “real” job. Now I’m a government contractor helping some of the more “positive” pieces of my government. It used to be as apolitical as it gets, but that’s changed lately. I still think my work has a net positive impact on the world.

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Rabble_Arouser@reddit

Several years ago, I was developing some medical education software. I saw direct impact from that. Honestly it felt good knowing that software I built was helping doctors learn and be assessed.

Now, I'm developing learning adjacent software, so I feel... okay.

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Apprehensive-Let8865@reddit

I work at a benefit corporation that makes tech for aid projects, mostly in the developing world. Been there for more than a decade now, mostly because I do feel like a benefit to society.

As a dev, I'm mostly behind the scenes, but I do get to interface directly with projects on occasion. The clients we work for do the actual good work, and we just try to make their jobs better. I get secondary satisfaction from that. This is stuff like maternal and child health, substance use disorder, and chronic disease management.

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SomeLoser1884@reddit

Yeah, I work in edtech and a lot of schools like our products. Then again, my company, like most ed tech shops, cut like 30-40% of the staff over the last 18 months thanks to the current admin.

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tecedu@reddit

Can't detail much on reddit via this account but work in energy industry where we drive net zero via automation and ml (not the llm kind); its relatively minor work but it allows us to expand capacity on our grid and allow less co2 release.

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Automatic-Stomach954@reddit

I am actively working on a project intended to directly replace thousands of human jobs. I feel like shit about it everyday.

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tralfamadorian808@reddit

LLM company? Lol. Maybe you just need to reframe. Automated switchboards displaced operators, ATMs displaced bank tellers, barcode scanners displaced inventory clerks, etc etc. These inventions that save work for humans are not inherently bad, nor should the inventor/engineers working on them feel bad. In fact, I think you should feel good about working on something that saves work for humans. That’s a net positive value production that you should be proud of.

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Gooeyy@reddit

It doesn’t matter how much work you “save” - the 40+ hour workweek arrives all the same.

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tralfamadorian808@reddit

What? I was responding to the commenter saying they feel bad for working on new technology that saves work for people. That’s objectively a good thing that they should feel good about. Without technological advancements we would all still be in the stone age, “working 40+ hour work weeks” as you put it, except dying at 40 and with a poor quality of life.

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Gooeyy@reddit

How many hours a week will LLMs save the average person?

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tralfamadorian808@reddit

I can't quantify that for you, but likely a very significant number if/when it aids in the advancement of other scientific, technological, and industrial advancements.

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cswinteriscoming@reddit

you know people used to work for longer than 40 hours, right?

also the point is to let people work on higher-value, less menial things, not to replace work entirely

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PurepointDog@reddit

At least it has until very recently. I believe we're seeing a shrinking labour force participation rate in western countries right now.

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cantquitreddit@reddit

Consider donating to an organization that would help the people whose jobs may be replaced. Efficiency and progress isn't inherently bad, but our society treats those without capital horribly.

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MandauCoexecutives@reddit

"our society treats those without capital horribly."

Sadly.

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Smallpaul@reddit

Did the inventor of the tractor feel guilty about decimating farm worker employment? Should they have? It’s subtle.

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xt1nct@reddit

I develop apps for manufacturing company. We can achieve more with less. We also waste less.

Am I bad? I don’t think so. Can people be let go because of increased productivity? Yes.

Are electric cars because some people may lose jobs? Or are they good because they pollute less?

Unless you are working to make something like social media addictive I don’t have a problem with it. There is always a grey area, some things make things better but have an impact on someone.

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tralfamadorian808@reddit

Absolutely not, they should feel proud, because saving work for humans is inherently a good thing. If you think about all of humanity as having x hours capacity to do work in a day, and n number of hours must be dedicated to manually doing a farming activity, or hand-washing laundry, then it’s objectively a net positive for humanity to free up those hours for better pursuits. Anyone who disagrees holds an anti-utilitarian philosophy and is welcome to go back to the stone age, because that’s where you end up without the cumulative work savings from technological advancement

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BROTALITY@reddit

you have agency my dude.

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dodiyeztr@reddit

But you keep doing the job. What a time to be alive!

(/s, like every other period of the human history)

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Automatic-Stomach954@reddit

I'm trying to get out. I just started working as a part time EMT. Once I get my financial affairs in order I hope to do that full time.

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TheOnlyTorko@reddit

You are positively affecting society by being a taxpaying citizen.

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JohnWangDoe@reddit

raise your children right, help your neighbor in need, and build a community where you can. That will have more impact than your job

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jackassery@reddit

depends on your job

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I agree, but I think it doesn’t hurt to look into impact through your job

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Kooky_Slide_400@reddit

1000 years too late, great question for a society that doesn't have to deal with survival credits

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aj0413@reddit

As long as im having a net positive impact on clients, other devs, etc.. im feeling good

It’s very, very, VERY rare we will ever have a direct positive impact on society at large. Most of what we all do is very specific to our client base / product and tech is basically always about building disposable things that get replaced as tech evolves to make money for corporate

I focus on the impact I have my coworkers and immediate stakeholders, whoever they may be.

Maybe I’m not inventing Wikipedia, but I can make a someone/anyone happy to use what I build and have a better day cause of it? I say that’s enough

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Virgil_hawkinsS@reddit

Kind of. Currently at a startup where the main goal is to help companies not get scammed by people who perform fake chargebacks. That part is whatever. The real benefit from my perspective is it should also prevent people from being able to use stolen cards on high risk sites.

I tried really hard before joining this one to get into medtech, specifically in the mental health space, but I just could not get passed any of their resume screeners for some reason. I wrote really impassioned cover letters and tried reaching out to recruiters directly and got no bites lol. My plan is to write something on my own that maybe catches someone's attention

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diablo1128@reddit

I worked on safety critical medical devices for years. Think of devices like dialysis machines that literally keep people with kidney failure alive.

The companies were old school top down management, the pay was low, and the code quality was meh at best. I would always joke that the code that ran AdWords at Google is probably better quality than what we have. The devices worked, was safe, and got FDA approval so it was a good enough situation.

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lluque8@reddit

Have been working for education sector the past 11 years. Really feel that were doing useful things for students and teachers on reasonably low budget. That's maybe the prime reason that has kept me in this gig for such a long time.

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Old_Dragonfruit2200@reddit

Im the reason we have more and more ai generated ads so I dont think im positively impacting society but the job is chill and I'm paid a lot and that's what really matters

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xamott@reddit

I am part of the video game industry and we benefit the storefronts, the developers, and the players all at once. I have 27 years experience and I love my job dearly.

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Robodobdob@reddit

My work supports cancer detection using AI.

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likeittight_@reddit

lol no, anyone here who thinks that is massively deluded

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JustPlainRude@reddit

I worked for a startup in my early 20s that I felt was going to make the world better, which motivated me in spite of the low salary. It ran out of money and didn't end up making anything better.

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jqVgawJG@reddit

My work directly relates to replacing plastic products with carton on an international level.

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eloel-@reddit

I have worked at jobs where I was negatively impacting the world/society. I hated it, was one of the chief reasons I quit said job.

Since then I have settled to not negatively impacting society. I write enterprise software, it's irrelevant to society, and that gives me some peace of mind.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s kind of where I’m at, but the irrelevancy is somewhat grating on me these days

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eloel-@reddit

Positive impact would be great, but irrelevant is stable, and a stable income can help you make a positive impact if you so choose.

Positive-impact jobs are low-paying because they're high in demand among workers. If you were to so choose, extracting money from an irrelevant job and funding more of those low-paying jobs would be more positive than actually doing it yourself.

Of course, I'm not doing that, and chances are neither will you, but hey, if the goal is to sacrifice money for positive impact, the opportunity is there.

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tripsafe@reddit

Positive impact jobs are low paying because it doesn’t make investors and shareholders richer

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MandauCoexecutives@reddit

I'm not saying I agree with this as a blanket statement, but incentives do have consequences.

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hypnofedX@reddit

Positive-impact jobs are low-paying because they're high in demand among workers. If you were to so choose, extracting money from an irrelevant job and funding more of those low-paying jobs would be more positive than actually doing it yourself.

The other half of this, to me, is asking whether you care about important work getting done or about being the person who gets to do it. It's not like that work goes undone because no one's willing to do it. As you said yourself, demand for those jobs is high.

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DigmonsDrill@reddit

Notably, the job was meant to positively impact society, but there was no money in it so they pivoted

Ah, another OpenAI alum.

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tripsafe@reddit

It really depends on the sector and what enterprises use the software.

Enterprise software makes money because it allows the corporations that use it to more efficiently make profits. In many cases, the growth of these corporations is part of the financialisation of the globe that ultimately serves to make the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer.

Just because the link isn’t direct it doesn’t mean our contributions are neutral unfortunately.

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GregsWorld@reddit

By that definition there's very few places if any you could work for that would be positive if you want to earn a decent wage.

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tripsafe@reddit

Yes, precisely. It’s very sad. A better world would incentivise work that improves your local community and broader society.

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eloel-@reddit

My previous job devolved into marketing questionable medication to desperate people.

I'll take my CRM irrelevancy over that direct a link any day anyway.

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Careful_Ad_9077@reddit

Third world here.

In my country there is a pharmacy degree where people hit a crossroad, they either work in the competitive and low paying world of genetic/cheap medicine that works, or they work for the homeopathic labs that pay well and are a fraud that ruins people's health.

Say what you want about traditional pharma, at least that one is intended to work, unlike homeo.

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thenowherepark@reddit

How did you like working at OpenAI?

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eloel-@reddit

Good guess, but no

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MandauCoexecutives@reddit

This is a much deeper question than at first glance. How does each person define positive impact?

Take the fictional Mirror of Erised in the Harry Potter universe. Bear with the analogy, because I think it'll be worth the read. The mirror is said to reveals the deepest, most desperate desire of a person's heart. Erised is "desire" spelled backwards, with the inscription "I show not your face but your heart's desire". So the mirror shows dreams rather than reality, causing many to waste away in the longing. The happiest people would see themselves in the mirror exactly as they are.

Taken more broadly, this means they do not desire anything beyond what they already have. They don't need more products or services, so their transactional velocity, and their velocity of money is low. Expanding this dynamic to the scale of a society, a perfectly content society would have a very low velocity of money. Low velocity of money is often used to describe an economic recession. But why does a recession exist at all if everyone spends and wants less? Well, not everyone does. In reality, people still need basics, and our society makes us pay for basics like shelter (at least property taxes), food, clothing, education, healthcare, etc. In some cases, not everyone is content, and we all need things to survive, but some are in a better position to get it relative to others at any given time.

One aspect of positive impact on people is a function of matching supply with demand. In a positive sense, when people need food, suppliers grow and supply food. Positive impact is created. That said, not all demand is created equal. Some participants stoke demand and generate supply for less healthy, more destructive, or less attainable things (which would lead to more destructive longing). From a more neutral perspective, money itself is created seemingly out of thin air with the creation of debt. Reason is, debt creates a risk-managed motivation which drives activity to repay the debt, creating value along the way.

In a changing economy, supply and demand are constantly moving targets, and one can trail the other by quite a bit, at both societal and individual levels. A baker is not suddenly going to become a software builder, or vice versa, though sometimes they do https://substack.com/@dimatodorova/note/p-189888820 !

In any case, when our society doesn't set the proper guard rails, it creates incentives for more participants to do things that are counter to positively benefitting people. Another words and in another sense, it puts desires at odds with reality.

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Staatstrojaner@reddit

My team and I built a new point of sale system for use with our main ERP product. We are rolled out to two customers now and I have seen the old POS systems they were using. I'm making their work easier, so it's a win, I think?

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DigmonsDrill@reddit

I work for a weapons manufacturer and I positively impact society by doing a bad job.

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koreth@reddit

Working at a couple successful startups in the 1990s and early 2000s left me in the fortunate position of not having to focus on maximizing my pay. For the last decade or so I've been picking companies doing work I believe in. These have mostly ended up being sort of "non-profit-adjacent" companies, where the companies themselves are for-profit entities but a large percentage of the customers are nonprofits and NGOs.

I've worked on software to support financial inclusion in the developing world, software to manage large-scale charity programs, and now I'm building software to help manage reforestation projects. My company isn't hiring any more software developers at the moment, but if you go to sites like Climatebase, you can find others doing similar things.

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Jesus-was-a-mushroom@reddit

I write software that instruments particle accelerators.

Advancing the collective body of scientific knowledge is a net benefit to everyone. At least I’m not toiling away making some billionaire rich!

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plasticlover@reddit

Many of my colleagues see themselves as impacting society positively while I think the opposite. I won't say the industry but imagine that it's like working in health insurance. It does help someone, but I don't think we're a net positive.

Thinking about switching for a govt or non profit job.

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Which-Tip336@reddit

I now exclusively look for jobs in climate tech spaces, and have begun to carve a niche out in energy startups. Sometimes there are downsides...turns out you can make big bucks doing demand response with crypto mines, and I feel gross when I work for a company that does that. But overall, it feels good knowing there are lots of inefficient systems out there that I can help improve. Currently working on streamlining home rebate application processes at scale. The tech is nothing special, it's just a matter of getting everyone to point in the same direction.

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brown-jenkin@reddit

Medical device software. Very positive impact and good salaries (at some companies).

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Western_Objective209@reddit

medtech in general is pretty good

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OoIIoO@reddit

Same. And even though the pay is lowish for SW Engineering, the benefits are outstanding, and at the end of the day I can talk positively about what I do to non-tech people.

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morosis1982@reddit

I'm working in the travel industry, and while I find the focus on revenue and profit a bit dreary at times, my customers are travel agents and they can be genuinely interesting and things we provide them exciting.

I am also in a small team that provides a lot of impact across our tech stack, which keeps things interesting but some days can be context switching hell.

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dontreadthis_toolate@reddit

No. I work for a bank.

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RandyHoward@reddit

Sort of. I work with businesses who sell their products directly to Amazon, anything you see on Amazon that says "shipped and sold by Amazon." I created automated software that helps these businesses recover funds that Amazon withholds.

Basically, when one of these businesses sends a shipment to Amazon, Amazon says "we only received 90% of what was ordered." But these businesses have proof that they shipped all of it. So our software submits disputes on behalf of the business to recover the money that Amazon is holding. Amazon won't give this money back unless it is proactively disputed. Currently we're recovering about $400k per month.

So I feel I'm having some positive impact by clawing back this money from Amazon. But I'm still supporting this industry, which I don't necessarily feel benefits society as a whole, especially Amazon.

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Alexa_load_the_bong@reddit

LOL, no.

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Yazzurappi@reddit

We're making a relatively successful screen time app. So, maybe not a society as a whole but definitely individuals.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s cool I’ve actually had an idea along the same lines. I’m pretty conscious of screen time etc, can I PM you?

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Yazzurappi@reddit

Sure, yeah

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kaflarlalar@reddit

I work for a solar startup. Thanks to us, hundreds of megawatts of solar panels are getting installed that otherwise wouldn't be. I feel good about that

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etoastie@reddit

I trust that maybe the users of our product are doing something worthwhile.

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OtaK_@reddit

Working in E2EE messaging protocols & systems so I think it’s a net positive, especially in the current privacy climate. I don’t mind safeguarding people’s privacy & democratic processes at large.

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b00n@reddit

I work in AI for industrial manufacturing. The products increase safety and quality whilst reducing costs (which is good for everyone since literally everything people use is impacted by these factories). Luckily labour costs in this industry is a small component of the overall cost so there is little chance of actually causing people to lose jobs (more likely people just don't do the dangerous ones anymore). Used to work in finance and this is more fun and impactful.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s pretty cool, can I PM you?

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b00n@reddit

Sure!

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03263@reddit

Only by earning more money than I need and using the excess to do what I think is good.

The work itself, not at all. Society did fine before electricity let alone computers and I think they may be a net negative.

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tetryds@reddit

No, never.

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Ambitious-Garbage-73@reddit

I built an internal tool at a hospital that cut patient intake time from 45 minutes to about 12. nothing fancy, just digitized a bunch of paper forms and auto filled the repeated fields. a nurse told me it gave them back enough time to actually talk to patients again instead of just typing. thats probably the only thing ive built that I think about when I cant sleep

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LebaneseLurker@reddit

I’m getting paid somewhere in the middle of my career salary range but I’m working with a non profit to move them from no tech to full suite of apps for the last 3 years.

TTS (time to serve) for their clients has dropped dramatically, which enables them to help more people with fewer resources… We have measurable reports that tell them just how much more efficient they are because of the tools we built for them…and I couldn’t be happier about it

I get paid just enough that I’m not worried about my bills and basic needs, and I’m happy enough with my career that I don’t hate myself every day and actually enjoy the work I do. Coming from an F500 recently getting paid an absurd amount to do soul sucking BS…. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to that life

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Foreign_Clue9403@reddit

One of the things that is worth observing is that the future cost of living is not as stable as typical models for retirement have suggested. I don’t know what it is but many people in the high paying jobs will look at a headline regarding the Middle East and express concerns about portfolios and give little thought to the future of practical energy and living needs, even though they take the same timelines to fruition.

That is to say, making 300K now may still put you behind the ball inflation wise or expense wise at the time of retirement. Marginally, it may be a better bet financially to just stick with things that align with your core values because you’ll likely keep that job for longer.

And like, idk but me personally I think I have a better bet of getting needs later on if my neighbors know that I helped out. Deploying capital only goes so far if you’re not connected with others.

Finally, maybe you could also offer perspective here, experience with a problem counts, so at some point it’s detrimental to delay positive impact in exchange for fungible capital (venture funds and private equity firms showing up to doctors offices are egregious in this dept). A trajectory of Eng VP at bank —> Eng at 501c3 does not necessarily bloom into the same outcome gains you have seen by just working on the mission at the outset.

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LebaneseLurker@reddit

I’m fully capable of picking up FTE jobs if needed, but I’m enjoying the current time of having my own thing making enough to get by. For reference I was making a bit above your salary just on my FTE at F500, and now I’m about half of that, which is still enough to pay bills, food, kids, health insurance. I’m lucky to have enough capital and runway to just…enjoy life for a bit. I’m still incredibly young and while people say these are your “earning years” it’s also my LIFE and I need to be able to live it and spend time with my kids.

Am I taking a potential million dollar (or multi-million) hit by retirement? Sure…but the difference is my kids will know I loved them and spend time with the and that’s worth more than a “nicer” number in their inheritance.

Not many wish their parents died with “more” but rather that they spend more time with their parents/kids. I will NOT have that regret and couldn’t be happier about it.

Hope that perspective helps.

P.S. I was a finance major and fully understand the financial impacts of compounding interest if NOT having a full time job right now..and I’m okay accepting the consequences because life isn’t all about the money.

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OkidoShigeru@reddit

Nope, I work mobile games, which can by and large be described as pretty much virtual casinos that target kids.

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No_Lingonberry1201@reddit

I used to work for a company whose product I worked on a lot once saved a guy from prison time in Germany, they tried to frame him for a massive data leak (serious business anywhere, but the Germans don't fuck around, it seems), but our product gave evidence that he didn't do it.

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galwayygal@reddit

Healthcare tech :) I love making our software more helpful to the clinics and patients

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tcpukl@reddit

My code brings joy to millions of gamers every year.

I'm proud of that.

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Insightseekertoo@reddit

I have in the past, and I've done rewarding work with NGOs, but today, right now. I'm out of work and contributing nothing. But not pulling in unemployment, so I'm not draining society.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I’d say get the unemployment if you can haha

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Insightseekertoo@reddit

Sold my business, which in my state makes me uneligable. LOL.

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MCPtz@reddit

Trying to do this vaguely, yes.

Software Engineer in robotics, working on something that is used in Healthcare and Science.

E.g. healthcare: could be used in a clinical setting to diagnose a rare genetic disease at birth. We've had Mercy Children's Hospital present to us, how exactly they used our product to do this in a safe and verified way.

Science: All the damn time. We have weekly emails from our head scientists, highlighting publications using our technology.

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cryinjordan@reddit

i work for google and i feel i am at the heart of capitalism.

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genlight13@reddit

I work in fintech/banking adjacent industry and i automate stuff. That is good enough.

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Confident-Alarm-6911@reddit

One of the reasons I changed jobs recently was that I wanted to make a positive impact on the world. And I think I’ve succeeded—I’m currently working in the energy sector, developing systems related to green energy and power grids automation and integration

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s very cool, could I PM you?

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Confident-Alarm-6911@reddit

Sure

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Ok-Leopard-9917@reddit

I work in infra and love it. It’s either positive or net neutral in social impact

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engineered_academic@reddit

I worked for a while in my career on a NASA project that was doing good work that had a strong positive impact on society. There are definitely organizations out there that use software to benefit people and not just make companies profit line go up.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That is pretty cool and thank you for your answer, this is the type of thing I was hoping for

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thereisnosub@reddit

If you live in the USA, take a look at the FFRDCs:

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

They all need software engineers, and you can do something that advances humanity.

Unfortunately under this administration they are under threat, so it's not the best time to be moving to federally funded science. And as u/engineered_academic mentioned, the pay is going to be 50% of what you might make at a FAANG. (but work-life balance is generally much better also).

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engineered_academic@reddit

The caveat is that you won't be earning huge salaries working for these companies. IMO it's probably a late-career thing if you control your spending and prevent lifestyle inflation.

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True-Caterpillar-915@reddit

I help with software to help reduce CO2 emissions in one industry that has been behind the software curve. Feels good. Does it boring sometimes but I've accepted that the most boring software usually has the biggest impact.

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Perfect-Campaign9551@reddit

Um that's called Corporate Religion.

I keep such aspirations to my personal life.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

What is corporate religion ? Thinking your work has positive impact? I think it can be “corporate religion” or it can be totally valid

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nrith@reddit

I found out that a project I worked on for many years would up being used for mass surveillance. Years later, I found myself on a contract that was being used for massive fracking operations. Since then, I’ve made a conscious decision not to work on anything that could be actively harmful. I’m currently working in healthcare software, and I’ve been incredibly lucky in being able to work on-site with providers to watch how the software benefits them and their patients. It’s been very rewarding.

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girlwithacompiler@reddit

junior dev here (1YoE>). I ponder over this question from time to time. And actually, yes. I was able to use my pay to help out friends, family & social health workers, who inturn where able to help out others in need. At least this is the story, I tell myself to stay motivated

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abandonplanetearth@reddit

I work on novel webGL apps that are designed to detect health issues, so yes.

And AI has actually been an absolute godsend for my team.

I often find myself on opposite sides of the general consensus in this subreddit. I love AI and I love my job.

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nsxwolf@reddit

You’ll probably get a bunch of people killed or disabled by over diagnosing issues, or cause massive increases in medicare spending and cause insurance premiums to increase, if that makes you feel any better.

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abandonplanetearth@reddit

I think you would be legitimately surprised by what AI can already do for healthcare.

And, of all the things we can put AI to work for, isn't healthcare the most noble of them all? Insurance premiums? What's that? Sounds like something only American's need to worry about.

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WhatsHeAt@reddit

Or maybe they aren't over diagnosing, and are actually catching issues that would have been missed otherwise? You have no idea if it's one way of the other. I mean seriously, why is "undoubtedly evil" the angle you've taken here?

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Haha gotta love Reddit sometimes

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That is very cool, can I PM you?

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taintedkernel@reddit

I realize this is not exactly what you are asking for, but I've found an immense amount of fulfillment through my volunteering work.

Just mentioning it as an option to explore, if you're finding it difficult to get this through your career (as most of us who seek seem to discover).

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apartment-seeker@reddit

Unless one is working for a non-profit or as a doctor or something, their job is not really "positively impacting society"

Accordingly, IDK why you would feel disillusioned about tech on this basis

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I think someone could work on, I don’t know, a device that makes surgeries +20% safer or whatever, then they’d be positively impacting society or atleast could reasonably feel that way.

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apartment-seeker@reddit

Yeah, I suppose that's true

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Bookseller_@reddit

I built software that aided in the education of commercial pilots and then went on to work for a company that specialized in getting books to underserved schools. The belief that I was doing meaningful work was real and it certainly made me feel better about going to work each day, but it did start to fade after many years.

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qrzychu69@reddit

I work in a bank, and technically my work hells people have higher retirement funds.

But at the same time... It's all excel and cvs, copy from place a to table b

I'm tired, boss

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Pancakefriday@reddit

I work on payment systems, it 100% affects society. I suppose that's mostly positive effect, but I really don't stress it too much. It is cool knowing many people are using my software though.

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Smallpaul@reddit

I work on health tech to take paperwork off the plate of doctors and let them focus on patients. So yes.

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TheBear8878@reddit

Yes, because I'm a nice person, I'm fun to be around, I support my friends, and I don't do bad things to people. My work has nothing to do with it.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Cheeky

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EuroCultAV@reddit

I have spent the last 3 years contracted to the veterans administration and a lot of the stuff I've worked on makes me feel like I have made a positive impact to American society through the well-being of our veterans.

I have on and off. Been a federal contractor since 2015 and most of the projects I work on I feel are a benefit.

The federal contracting space isn't known for grade pay or grade benefits, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my work here.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s awesome, could i PM you?

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EuroCultAV@reddit

Sure

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YeastyWingedGiglet@reddit

Fortunately for me, I work for a company that does benefit society. Related to mental health

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Can I ask what you do in that space? I can PM you

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VonNeondor@reddit

There is no impact. There is only do and die

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professor_jeffjeff@reddit

I work on a solution that no one asked for to a problem that no one has. The whole thing is fucking stupid.

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theKetoBear@reddit

I work in games you can argue on one hand my work is an opiate helping dull the senses and drive of people in society as we sleep walk to an inevitbale doom . I wouldn't argue against that point.

HOWEVER It's also really beautiful reading stories from players who share how your game may be the one thing that made coming home worth it when life got hard. I've seen people whose houses got burned down and a game I worked on was one of there few escapes. People who have been in grief and a game I worked on was an escape that made the heavy days just slightly lighter.

There's a ton of negative aspects to working in the game industry and choosing software engineering in games as a career but I also think the medium encourages play , fantasy, creativity, collaboration, and power fantasy and in a itme where people feel powerless and at times hopeless it feels nice to be the small bit of levity in times where people feel crushed.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That is pretty awesome, sounds like a cool job

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eeaxoe@reddit

Work in healthcare as a researcher/engineering hybrid.

Literally get paid to save lives (proven in rigorous published studies) through ML/AI tools. And we get paid on par with big tech with unbeatable WLB.

Being able to sleep at night knowing you're at least doing some good in this hellworld is a great feeling.

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djkianoosh@reddit

working in federal (and in the past state/local) government every day is a fight to be more efficient and effective to save taxpayer dollars and improve government services to the public.

I feel like have followed up and cleaned up several failed IBM programs specifically 😆

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I’ve done some government stuff too and definitely a lot of efficiency to be gained 😂

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j0kaff01@reddit

I feel like we all could be positively benefitting society if we had better governments, regulations, and less of a stigma against socialism. Until then, the fruits of our labor will be weaponized for maximum wealth extraction.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Does feel like a losing battle sometimes I hear that

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symbiatch@reddit

I’ve worked in medical research, security, hunting drug lords, finding lost people, education, renewable energy etc. I choose my work specifically for impact. So yes, I definitely feel I’m having positive impact on the world. Not necessarily a huge one but still.

And in general in my work I focus on making people’s work easier and better. So for some individuals it’s having quite an impact. Be it pushing performance so they ca do what they want in five minutes instead of an hour, or just usability, or whatever.

I wouldn’t want to have “just a job” and do something menial.

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niiniel@reddit

No.

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SquishTheProgrammer@reddit

I work on neurofeedback software. I thought it was voodoo science at first but you can see a real change in people’s brain waves after they’ve completed some sessions.

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napoles48@reddit

I was thinking the same not long ago, but then I was on site implementing/training new users on the new processes and seeing how happy they were when something were automated and they didn't need sheet and paper anymore. Normally we replace an old software with new software, which I understand may be annoying, but those happy faces will stay with me and it will hopefully keep motivating me every time I'm feeling down.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That is a good feeling

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spookymulderfbi@reddit

The company i work for processes the paperwork for large companies that require "claims" (not just healthcare). We dont make the decisions. We just build the software that shuffles the papers around digitally. We dont add or subtract to the good/bad, but we are definitely part of larger systems that sometimes shift the good/bad around. It's hard to know when to feel responsible for anything.

I feel like there is a metaphor for something larger in there about life or the industry, but my next call starts in 2 mins so :(

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metaphorm@reddit

some jobs I've worked because I thought the positive impact would be a strong motivator: SRE/Infra/DevOps at a biotech company literally working on the cure for cancer, software engineer working on web interfaces for a prototype quantum computer at a quantum computing startup.

both of those jobs were miserable. the company mission was inspiring at first, but the actual working conditions, constrained by economics, funding, politics, and ambitious founders and their delusions, made the work itself pretty bad and the company culture pretty rotten.

so my advice is to not simply disregard the actual working conditions and company culture just because the mission seems great.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

That’s fair

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dbxp@reddit

Debatable, we do have some community group and fundraising products though and a whole wing of the company makes software for care workers.

Back in the day our main competitor was Capita so getting users off that kit was certainly a good thing. Now we have some more modern competitors who actually provide workable solutions rather than just vendor lock in.

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DrNoobz5000@reddit

I mean, it’s just a job bro. You do work, you get money, you fuck off. If you’re looking for fulfillment from a 9-5, maybe you need to rethink your life.

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mackstann@reddit

Why wouldn't you care about a huge portion of your life?

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

I’m not attacking or judging you for having this view, seems unnecessarily abrasive lol

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The_Big_Sad_69420@reddit

I’m gonna take a jab and say DrNoobz isn’t very happy with their job 😅

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Connect_Detail98@reddit

Nha

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thelochteedge@reddit

I wouldn't say "positively" in the sense of like helping less fortunate or the environment but I do work on stuff that allows others to easily do their jobs, which is nice. After 10+ years of soul-sucking insurance I'll take the neutrality.

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iammobius1@reddit

With my work? No. Through my support group? Yes.

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campbellm@reddit

Made money, pay my taxes, raised a kid who is now doing the same.

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roughsilks@reddit

I worked in adtech for 5+ years and felt a little slimy about how much data we parsed from people clicking around. It was my first job offer so I was in it for the paycheck and health insurance. I also got to work with the coolest new stuff at the time: machine learning, Go, Kubernetes, etc.

Now I work making music instrument apps and it feels way better. More work, less pay, less cutting edge tooling but I feel crazy lucky to work on stuff whose sole purpose is helping people be creative. Plus it’s way more interesting to explain at a dinner party to non-techie people.

Good luck! It’s at least worth a try if possible to make a change.

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arihoenig@reddit

I work in cybersecurity. Globally cybersecurity is a complete mess, so working to make it better (while it is still depressing how bad security is) does result in a certain degree of satisfaction.

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BTTLC@reddit

Ehh, I work in the auth space for a cloud provider. Not necessarily positively impacting the greater society, but I think it positively benefits our users (devs), doesnt negatively affect anyone, so I have no moral qualms over it.

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Lazy-Cloud9330@reddit

There are loads of problems to solve. Find one that you're passionate about and sell the solution. You don't need to work for a company anymore. Work for yourself.

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KryssCom@reddit

Yes. I work on the US organ transplant system - helping patients understand the process, and helping medical researchers and professionals access the reams of data we have on the system so they can analyze it and devise ways to make it work better at all levels.

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MrMichaelJames@reddit

How old are you? I’m guessing young and you haven’t realized that work rarely is like what you want. Get up, go in, do stuff, go home, get paid for doing stuff. Then hope you don’t get fired because some board isn’t making as much as they want to. That’s pretty much it.

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shan23@reddit

Hahahaha….

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streamofbsness@reddit

I worked in health tech. I truly believed that we were working altruistically to help people stay healthy. Unfortunately, I think we were too altruistic, because we never figured out how to capitalize on our users, never turned a profit, and eventually folded. So I’m still trying to find a place where I have a significant positive impact: somewhere that is a successful enough business to impact large numbers of people, but also is generally good for society.

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Jaded-Asparagus-2260@reddit

Yes, absolutely. The business domain is the most important factor for my job choice. We can chose whatever job we like. I feel like it's my (and your) responsibility to use the time to create a positive value for society, democracy, the environment or whatever we deem important.

Fuck FANG, automotive, social media, e-commerce and so on. Nobody needs those. The world would be a better place without them. Don't legitimize them by working for them.

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fumanchudrew@reddit

I went from working with startups to non-profits. I always donated my time to non-profit causes that needed tech/development help, and eventually one received some grant money to bring me in full time. It's a dream. I sleep so much better knowing I'm helping for a cause I believe in(literacy programs in under-served communities). I still have to do some contract work in other sectors to make up for the income difference, but it's worth it for my peace of mind.

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Additional_Sleep_560@reddit

For a long time I’ve viewed my work as making it a little bit easier for people to do their jobs. I don’t need it to be revolutionary, or life changing, just to make it easier so their day to day tedium isn’t as bad as it was.

I don’t need my work to “impact society”, I just want it to make someone’s life a little better. I’ll let society take care of itself.

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lambda-lord-2026@reddit

My point of view:

The world is F'd. The people in power are wrecking it for their own benefit. Everything is only getting worse. The systems built up over the 20th century that guaranteed widespread prosperity are either being corrupted, torn down, or both.

With this in mind, I care about exactly one thing: providing a good life for my family. I can't fix the world, but I can make sure my family is comfortable. That's it. I don't care what my company does, as long as my paycheck and benefits allow me to achieve that goal.

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TheTrailrider@reddit

No, any more questions?

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NGTTwo@reddit

I do agricultural technology, actively building the next generation of precision farming tech. I'll be a little non-specific about my employer, but basically, we enable growers to produce more food using less chemicals.

It's cool, socially positive, and (for the market I'm in) pays well because it's a startup with a complex domain requiring a high skill level. And I get to work on every bit of the stack, from hardware (including fieldwork), through DevOps and backend, all the way through to the customer-facing frontend.

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Budget-Length2666@reddit

hm, kind of. I am a tiny tiny wheel in a huge system that has a tiny (but large in comparison to market share and other companies) impact on the economy and a strong economy has a net positive effect on society as this means less people dying.

I am not clark kent, but I don't have to be. I just have to provide for my family without doing harm to other people and I am fine.

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loctastic@reddit

I work in cold storage and I can directly see how the work I do impacts the business and consumers. So yes I think so

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TimeLordTim@reddit

Depends on how you define "society".

I work in a small sales company, building internal tools and reporting. Nothing I make gets out to the public. The stuff I make doesn't house the homeless or feed the starving or make the world a better place.

My work doesn't change the whole wide world, but it changes smaller worlds every day. Joe from Accounting gets to go home earlier than before and spend time with his kids. John from Inventory doesn't have to spend a week every quarter compiling Aged Inventory reports. My coworkers don't need to pull data. They don't need to build the reports themselves. They don't need to sort through months of sales and invoices to extract KPIs. It makes life easier for the people around me.

And maybe that's small potatoes, but change never starts at the macro level. A rising tide lifts all boats. Help the little guy and it spreads out from there. At minimum you're helping one person, but helping one person never impacts just them. It impacts their family and their friends too.

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Plenty_Line2696@reddit

I work in warehouse automation, in a civilized society that improved efficiency would mean people in general would be better off because they can do more work with less people but in our fucked up society it will make selfish business people richer and rob lower class people of a viable income. Our society sucks man, why is everyone so fucking stupid. It's not complicated to have some wealth equality and a decent standard of living. I'm so dissapointed.

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BadassSasquatch@reddit

Once my team began focusing on accessibility, I feel like we've been making a positive impact. It's incredibly difficult work, but worth it.

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CardinalHijack@reddit

I don't understand why that is such a key factor for people in tech, way more so than anyone else in any other role.

What do you do for society outside of your job? Do you go around litter picking, or volunteering to answer phones for suicide hotlines, or helping at care homes, or helping with the youth, or donating your time to help software challenges for non profits?

I know so many people who want to be "working on something impactful" yet do absolutely nothing to positively impact society outside of their day job to a point where by it seems performative and an easy way out of ACTUALLY doing something impactful while being able to humble brag about you some how helping out in the world.

Why cant you get your pay cheque and then go and do positive things in society? Please don't reply with "impact" - Im not going to have you explain how you some how quantify building an API service for an international charity is more impactful than going to the old peoples home and donating your time.

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RabbitWithADHD@reddit

EdTech, it feels good seeing the direct and positive impact on such an important part of our society. And I get to work with cutting edge technologies, this is definitely the best position I’ve had in my entire career.

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DrizztInferno@reddit

I’m pretty sure I actively contribute to the downfall of society for a paycheck.

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okawei@reddit

Ed tech was where i felt I make the most impact

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FewBrief1839@reddit

I work for a big nonprofit org and this has been a beautiful experience, thought I think every job has its own downsides

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Detr22@reddit

I work with biodiversity conservation. From participating in field expeditions to collect germplasm to building scripts to analyze data from characterization experiments.

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blacksteel15@reddit

Not really, but I like what I do and don't think it's actively a bad thing. And I get paid a lot of money to do it, and since I don't and won't have kids I spend a lot of it trying to help my friends, family, and community.

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One-Development6793@reddit

Nope!

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Ok-Entertainer-1414@reddit

I think anything that produces economic value benefits society at least a little bit, as long as it doesn't come with big negative externalities.

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The_Big_Sad_69420@reddit

I work for a e-commerce company (not rainforest) and while I wouldn’t say I’m going the world much good, I console myself that at least it’s not palantir. The real kicker is I paid a lot of taxes and I fear that’s doing worse things to the world rn, lol.

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Careful_Ad_9077@reddit

End to end it depends on other people.

But I work in a factory and the savings and optimizations I create with software should mean some workers get to spend less energy at work and get home less tired, and more directly savings in materials means less pollution overall.

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Fickle-Tomatillo-657@reddit

No

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psaux_grep@reddit

Every now and then.

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frankster@reddit

I feel like a positive impact will come after I retire not before

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pickledplumber@reddit

The majority of us create useless crap so some rich people can get richer. Very few of us are actually working on important systems and tools that will bring humanity forward. Very similar to how finance sucks up all of these supposedly very smart people. It's nice they get good salaries but what is lost?

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hakazvaka@reddit

lol

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horse-boy1@reddit

Used to, I worked at NIH as a dev (+ science background) on applications to analyze and visualize cancer data.

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MyriaCore@reddit

No. Struggling with this myself

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Zz_L@reddit

That’s a really deep question. There’s also a distinction between what people want and what is good for them, eg social media.

I work in the energy industry and all my impact is positive. I used to work in the scientific industry so the impact is good until it’s bad. The product was too low level to know the outcome generated by users.

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GoTheFuckToBed@reddit

my job is to create pain and suffering, people go vote

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rcls0053@reddit

I've been working in various different industries for two decades, and right now I'm working for a public sector client through a consultancy, and I just feel it being so pointless. Literally building a bureaucracy platform, just a massive form builder where government officials process those forms. It might be positively impacting some people, and make it faster to process those applications, but I just find it so incredibly boring and useless. Been struggling with it all year. I have no real motivation to wake up to work because it's so boring.

Luckily an old colleague recently messaged me about a position at their health care company that might be opening. Hopefully it'll work out because I want to do something meaningful.

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

It’s funny I had a job doing some consulting stuff seemingly very similar to what you described. It does drain on you after a while the banality. I hope the new thing works out!

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Fuzzy_Sport808@reddit

when we say society do we mean shareholders? if so yes

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DestinTheLion@reddit

I feel like i am actively harming society with everything i do.

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carnivoreobjectivist@reddit

I work in something related to education which feels good. My work impacts millions.

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Ferreira1@reddit

I work in a research group doing the software for healthcare related clinical trials. It's “doing good”; even if at the end of the day a big corporation will benefit, people suffering from what we're working against also do.

The downside being this type of position pays really poorly in comparison to “normal” industry jobs, and you're always understaffed.

I genuinely would not recommend it.

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kerrizor@reddit

I used to. These days… eh?

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Mentalextensi0n@reddit

I work in the public sector and all the software we write and maintain is available for free for the benefit of the public. That being said, the technology is slightly less modern than what you’re gonna find in tech.

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CodeToManagement@reddit

Yea my last 2 jobs have been pretty good from a social perspective

Most of my career has been building products which at least make things better for a person in some way or another. Nothing groundbreaking but still

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

What type of products if you don’t mind me asking? For example one “next thing” I can do is work at a bank or something. Sure I’ll be building products and I’m not “above” that or anything, but the end result of maybe making a bank have a nicer exchange or something isn’t that exciting of an end game

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AvailableFalconn@reddit

Nope. 12 years and the closest I’ve come to doing any good is a small exercise app. The projects I’ve worked on that have done any good have been inversely proportional to the good they do. Got all the praise and attention when working on push and email notification spam. Got 0 support for working on combating disinformation. Great industry we’ve got.

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rndaz@reddit

Not usually, no. I don't have direct contact with customers. Only second-hand information when customers are unhappy.

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dead-first@reddit

No

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AmbitionIndividual80@reddit (OP)

Thank you 😂