Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?
Lately I&#x27;ve been experiencing some depression (under treatment), so maybe this is just the state of my mind right now, but is anyone else growing more and more cynical about the potential for changing the world, and adjusting their moral philosophy to compensate?<p>I could barely impact how my former employer ran the company, and even though I had the company&#x27;s best interests at heart the whole time, I faced resistance the entire way. Political change is even more out of reach. I grow tired of obviously bad policy ideas being promoted because of political party consensus (on &quot;both&quot; sides). I am exhausted of the generational warfare that is causing newer generations to face an uphill battle for the rest of their lives, with higher health care costs, higher housing costs, higher environmental costs, higher education costs, and lower wages. I&#x27;m sick of inaction on important issues, misguided action on petty issues, and the nonexistent potential for small unpolitical changes that could have big impacts but won&#x27;t ever see the time of day because the need for political posturing doesn&#x27;t allow for it (like for example, a change to the metric system).<p>I feel trapped and helpless to change anything. And sometimes my feeling of helplessness has made it so I can no longer muster the effort to care for things that are so far beyond my control. I&#x27;m at the point on Maslow&#x27;s Hierarchy where taking care of my family&#x27;s survival is the only important thing anymore. I sometimes ponder whether I should just go out and get some kind of unethical job that pays a ton of money (and there is no shortage of those kinds of jobs for people of my talents) merely because it accomplishes that goal more efficiently. But then I feel bad about entertaining that thought. I don&#x27;t really know what to do about it.