The Quest for Meaningful Work

I have a degree in computer science, and I’ve worked a number of jobs and contracts in my career thus far, but none of them have caused me to feel that my work matters. It seems that it’s surprisingly hard, as an educated person, to get meaningful employment in your field.

Some of the things I’ve worked on include: an internal tool for actuaries, a gambling website, a network security tool, a website for rating university professors, and some miscellaneous corporate websites.

With the obvious exception of the gambling website, which clearly does society no good at all, these projects may seem like productive things to work on. Dig a little deeper though, and you’ll find that there is not as much substance as you might hope.

Really, though highly paid, none of this work results in much benefit to anyone. The actuaries were doing just fine without the internal tool I was working on, and I’m willing to bet they would derive only marginal efficiency improvements from having it. The website for rating professors had some utility, but was primarily used for toxic criticism of professors people didn’t like. The security tool could make someone’s job a bit easier, but aside from that it wouldn’t do much. You would still need a security expert to implement it’s recommendations anyway. The corporate websites could have been useful if it wasn’t for the fact that the companies requesting them didn’t actually need them.

Let’s compare this work to my “lesser educated” relatives. My brother is an electrician and works for a university maintaining their buildings. He’s also worked on new buildings and has helped to replace the bulbs in public streetlights. This is very useful work, and it is immediately obvious it is so.

My father has a high school education, and works as a manager in a plant producing paper towels, toilet paper, facial tissue, etc. His work is also immediately beneficial to society as it results in a universally useful product. You might say that it does environmental harm, and perhaps it does, but the company he works for replants almost all the trees it cuts down, so the harm is arguably fairly marginal.

My step-father is a contractor who owns his own business. He builds homes for people and owns some apartments in the small town in which he lives. Again, this provides obvious utility to society. He has a high school diploma.

So what then? Did I go and pay for 5 years of university to become a highly paid leech on society? It certainly seems that the higher you climb on the societal ladder, the less useful work you do for a higher reward. Should I be happy with that? I don’t know. I want to do something that matters in my field, and I’d gladly work for a barely livable wage for that opportunity.

And yet, those opportunities are stunningly hard to find. I don’t even know where to look. Job boards seem to just be filled with work similar to what I’m already tired of doing.

I’m even starting to worry that the want of meaningful work is just a form of entitlement. After all, there are many people who would love to do my lackluster work and collect my paycheck, but are unable. So, maybe I should just be satisfied with what I have and not rock the boat? I don’t know.

That being said, if anybody can point me to some job openings in my field that would allow me to do meaningful work, then please do. I’m not just writing this to complain, I want to change. Help me plaster this ship with C4 and blow it out of the water.