I have never worked at a company that used that phrase in a straight faced fashion. Silicon Valley encompasses a lot more than consumer driven tech startups. It includes old standard companies like National Semiconductor, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and so on.

I think you've wrapped yourself in an echo chamber that you don't care to be inside.

And, in fact, those "boring" companies account for most of the employment. Cisco alone probably employs more people in the Bay than the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. (Disclaimer - I have looked up precisely zero actual numbers on this.)

The start ups that talk about saving/changing the world are typically the ones that seem to be doing the least to change the world out of pure empathy. I see that the most in digital media, or the companies that are in a really traditional area but are being hip about it, something like point of sale systems.

"We're immanentizing the eschaton one SAP plugin at a time."

Haha... levity definitely helps in enterprise software.

We develop ERP/CRM plugins, and I don't even pretend to sell employees on a "change the world" mission.

(We do, however, strive to build the best picks and axes so others can change the world).

Crypto-Gnosticism does describe the silly-con valley faith.

Do you believe changing the world is a real goal, or a convenient phrase used to convince the naive to work hard and cheaply? Let's not give too much credit, it's a sales pitch and almost everyone knows that.

"I feel sorry for people who sell their creative energy for the sake of money and popularity."

This is called 'a job'.

This is called “being exploited for an unfair share of profits”.

Software engineers have access to a large space of choices on share of profits vs. risk.

“Risk”

What about a job is unfair, exactly?

I don't necessarily agree but 'drb91 clearly wrote that the share of profits is unfair.

Since when did life become fair ?

Karl Marx called this "surplus value".

The means of production in our industry range from dirt cheap to free and open source.

> This is called “being exploited for an unfair share of profits

So you're fine with nursing assistants getting paid like shit?

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