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Aprecheyesterday at 10:53 PM6 repliesview on HN

One of the many reasons to never actually care about the work you are doing if it is a for-profit endeavor, and you are not the owner. You are there to collect a paycheck so you can survive. If you want a job that you should care about then work in public service, at a non-profit, or for yourself.


Replies

xg15yesterday at 11:11 PM

It's a reasonable stance until the point where most of society is ran by for-profit companies. Then that mindset actively makes the world worse.

Your bosses might not actually care about the work you do, but your users and customers sure will.

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mickael-kerjeanyesterday at 11:54 PM

> If you want a job that you should care about then work in public service

I did that in the health sector of my local gov, the whole place was full of consultant who either got contracted directly from Oracle, used to work at Oracle before but moved there or took the Oracle pill early on and never got the idea to see how things get done elsewhere. It was impossible to ship anything that's not made of Oracle technologies and that was not an accident but a deliberate construction.

analog31yesterday at 11:50 PM

Another option is to do work you care about, in a way that doesn't attract the attention of people who might thwart it. I think plenty of socially or personally redeeming work can be done this way, for instance within very large companies. Enough of this work, in fact, that the net outcome for people and society is actually beneficial.

the_cat_kittlesyesterday at 10:57 PM

basically agree, though if you work for a transparently evil company you should care, and quit

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ameliustoday at 9:21 AM

However: work is more fun if you care about it.

wbltoday at 1:08 AM

Do you think people at Merk or Pfizer or Disney don't care about what they work on?