> Do you think your plumber started his business thinking of making the world a better place?

For the tradespeople I have known, the answer is yes. They also like getting paid, of course. But they find satisfaction in making the world better one sink at a time. Otherwise spending 40 years as plumber would be an absolutely miserable experience.

Yes absolutely. They enjoy and take pride of their work. But did they start their business with the idea of "making the world a better place" and then went on to trade school? I'm not saying these two things are opposite of each other, but most people start businesses so they can make money to bring food on the table at the end of the day.

Ok but there is still a difference between someone who works as a plumber and someone who starts their own plumbing business.

Absolutely, making more money is a big motivator for entrepreneurs across the board, including plumbing entrepreneurs.

If that's the case, I expect a lot of entrepreneurs end up disappointed. Quite a lot of solo proprietors end up working more for less. But when I talk with people, it's generally not money that really motivates them. It's a sense of freedom or ownership.

You believe a person cannot find satisfaction in a job well done (and a solid paycheck), they have to "change a world" to feel accomplished?

I found the documentary "Jiro dreams of sushi" illustrative (in the opposite extreme). I believe most of us would fall somewhere in between (... aaaand, we get to Maslow again :)

That's the exact opposite of what I'm saying.

If by "change the world" you mean narcissistic grandiosity about being in the history books, yeah, that's generally ridiculous. But small things also change the world. Raising kids. Installing sinks. Fixing roofs. Serving a meal. All of these things make the world a little better.

This is distinct from what Graeber called "bullshit jobs". Making sure that you use the new cover sheet on the TPS report that nobody will read, for example. Some people are happy doing bullshit. But trades have the appeal of doing something undeniably real, undeniably beneficial.

So yes, as I said, I believe that somebody who started a solo plumbing business is absolutely thinking of making the world a better place. And I think they do it every day.

Their work is also immediately real and beneficial. A plumber friend told me a story the other day. Over the winter a woman's water inlet pipes had frozen. She was without water for two or three days and when they got her pipes flowing again she was so happy that she cried.

Most people will find a certain level of satisfaction in a job if it's well done. I don't think there are many people who perform reasonably at their job while not being satisfied with a job well done.

This applies to 99% of businesses started by tech professionals too. There is nothing nobler or kinder about tech businesses. All those "mission statements" are just pure fluff for PR purposes.

Just wanted to chime in from the supposed 1% as someone who isn’t running a business earn money but earn money in order to continue running the business. A business building something I’m passionate about, with the addition of an end goal I expect will make the world a better place.

> There is nothing nobler or kinder about tech businesses. All those "mission statements" are just pure fluff for PR purposes.

true, but would it be wrong to assume that the following ratio:

(the number of people who are passionate about xyz and curiosity and pure joy are major driving forces) / (total number of people working in xyz)

is probably much higher for cs than for plumbing?

Being 'passionate and curious' have nothing to do necessarily with 'making the world a better place'.

If anything it's kind of a personal issue.

Surely most scientific discovery comes along with passion and curiosity, so there's some overlap there, but most work doesn't get done out of either of those things. Most of the things that move the ball forward are a grind.

I only want to hire a plumber with passion, who is making the world a better place one clogged drain at a time. Haven’t been able to find one yet but I’m still looking.

Plumbing, building, electrics all require understanding the current state of the system (eg: house that 20 different cowboys have messed with over the years), and weighing up the different possible solutions - sure there is a measure of simple/straightforward work, but same can be said of software engineering.

We work in a different medium, but at a high level I think the process can look very similar, and there's satisfaction in a job well done

> I only want to hire a plumber with passion, who is making the world a better place one clogged drain at a time.

Don't know about the passion, but they really are making the world a better place, one clogged drain at a time.

It's probably the same. Some CS people like to work on side projects. So do a lot of plumbers by renovating their homes or tinkering with other stuff in their spare time.

I'd have guessed, most CS people would do OSS and only a fraction of them turns these projects into products.

I met too many business people who just wanted to run a startup no matter if it was software or physical products.

Doing plumbing for fun is like parsing old logs as a hobby. But plenty of people do woodwork,metalwork, bread-making, brewing, etc for fun.

It can be both. There is no mission without money.

Plumbers do make the world a better place though and unlike software engineers almost no plumbers make it a worse place.

You say that like it's a unique thing to software engineers.

In the cases you're probably thinking that should include, the marketers, sales people, operations staff, recruiters, and basically anyone else who keeps the business running.

You either think software engineers are so powerful as to effect the direction of these large businesses, in which case, you're wrong.

Or that somehow people earning a better living for themselves given the current climate which is almost uniformly stacked against the standard worker is wrong.

I think you should step back and look at the actual causes like their boards, investors and senior management as well as the government.

To note I say this with a clear conscience since I've never worked at any of the Big Co's at this point in time by choice.

That's nonsense. A bad plumber can make people's lives hell in a way a software engineer probably can't. Some software engineers may have more leverage than plumbers but in the end most of us just try to survive in a world that's shaped by a few powerful people.

If someone is bad or evil in any profession it might make the world a worse place.

It's a scale issue.

Plumbers don’t need to speculate that they might make the world a better place.

if your toilet is stuck? he fixes it. certainly the plumbers make the world a better place....

btw. think about a b2b business. think about an erp software. there is lots or room for specializing, just like the businesses you will make it for. i run an engineering an production company, and just because there was nothing there, we made our own. i am happy to share it, leave me a message if interested.

My point was that a plumber’s impact on making the world a better place is obvious.

No, But i'll bet you the plumber who does not absolutely love going under the sink each day has money and is miserable. The one who enjoys telling you the anatomy of your sink when you didn't ask (you know the type) those guys don't even care about the money, they just love what they do