I honestly wonder whether anyone else has had my philosophical crisis this past few years. I started to think all of my attempts to be part of an elite group that's "changing the world" through technology are actually fucking it up more.
Whether this is fueled by burnout or a feeling of uneasiness with world events I can't be sure. I'm getting scared though because if I don't get my motivation back in a few years being broke is going to suck.
I've had similar thoughts. The problem to me is that a huge portion of the people who say they want to "change the world" really mean they want to get rich quick with loose morals or they want to change the world in mostly trivial ways for young urban professionals. On the flip side, there are plenty of people and companies who legitimately are trying to change the world for the better for large segments of the population, but they're not paying FAANG salaries with cushy offices and benefits.
It comes down to your own priorities - if you want to actually help make the world a better place, you're probably going to have to suck it up and take a salary and career trajectory hit to work at a non-profit or a help-oriented company with low comp structure not based in a sexy city. If you're unwilling to give up some lifestyle points for that, you'll always be faced with companies that are really only paying lip service to positive change while actually being driven by profits.
Yeah, I think anybody with some kind of moral compass in tech has that thought at the back of their mind. When I was 18, the thought of working somewhere like Google was the dream, but now I'm not so sure.
Google itself changed a lot. 13 years ago it was amazing to work there. In 2008 there was a feeling of slowing down luxury expenses, but the real change was when Larry came instead of Eric Schmidt as a CEO: he's boring (and Sundar is just his puppet) and forces boredom on the employees.
Eric Schmidt had a great way of saying no to employees while still making them excited about the possibilities ahead of Google.
The company I work for doesn't even have an ad platform, and its business model isn't designed around addicting people to anything. I don't go home with the thought in the back of my head that I'm just making a drug that much more attractive. We actually help people. I've heard customers talk about how we saved them from some big disaster before.
Companies that are designed to be exploitative and addictive are the minority, really. They just got really large because of how successful that business model can be and loom large in our minds. There are plenty of places to work based on creating win-win scenarios with customers. You may take a pay cut from Google. Then again, you may not even take that much. Can't hurt to look around.
I can't lay claim to "changing the world", but I do feel like my job is making it better. I'm a Chesterton's Fence kinda guy anyhow. It doesn't surprise me all that much that a lot of companies out to "change the world" do so only to discover that their change wasn't an improvement after all. Improving the world at all is a tall order; to do so in a revolutionary fashion, nearly impossible. (On the flip side, a lot of that "change the world" stuff is just rhetoric anyhow. "We're going to change the world by making it slightly easier to call taxis on your phone!" may be a great pep-talk, but it's kinda... silly.)
I do have ask about this desire to "change the world", as I constantly question my own motivations. We all generally think of it in a positive manner, but have most SV companies actually done that objectively? I'm not so sure. I think when we say "change the world", most of the time we really mean, get rich doing something impactful (negative or positive). If we all really wanted to change the world we would go work for non-profits cleaning water for African children or something. By this I mean, there are things that are currently objectively changing the world in a positive way and can certainly benefit from people who have analytical and software skills, but they don't tend to pay very well.
Many of these 'change the world' efforts by non-profits do not scale if there is not a profit motive associated with them. The profit motive would naturally keep these programs running and people happy to make a good living while actually helping others when going to work. Instead what you have is non-profits totally relying on the government and rich people feeling pitty to keep their doors open. Generating a profit can eliminate that and can actually empower these companies to help in the ways they want to without middle men.
I think this issue can still be solved by technology. Keep working on technology that allow me to be self sufficient for my basic needs. I have that, I don't need to work for anyone anymore to survive.
Whether this is fueled by burnout or a feeling of uneasiness with world events I can't be sure. I'm getting scared though because if I don't get my motivation back in a few years being broke is going to suck.