Are you under the impression the blog post author is?
Look if people need money I don’t think many of us are passing judgement on that. But if you’re privileged and your sole criteria for a new job is accruing capital, you bet I pass judgement on it. And honestly once you get over 200k a year I think the immigrant straw person everyone points out whether they are one or not can probably start getting picky too.
(If you wanna wait until after 300k/yr I’m cool with that too. But at some point you’re accruing enough capital that you can start thinking about what you spend your time on in your day job, and have a moral obligation to do so. When this kicks in is totally relative to a person’s situation.)
I agree there’s a point which that moral inflection point occurs, but I think the number is complex to come up to.
I’ll give an example. I make a pretty obscene salary that falls within your definition of “needing to care”.
But I live in a VHCOL city. I would love to move and work remote, but my partner has a career that’s in tech, but much less remote friendly.
I’m into personal finance, so here’s my projection. Assuming I want to own a home and have kids in this VHCOL region, I will need to work about 20-30 years to achieve this goal. And it’s 1 poorly timed recession from derailing. You know what I really wanted to do in life? Teach high school chemistry and own a cafe.
Am I better off than many many people? Yes. Do I have enough to take 30% pay cut to work at <arbitrary good place>? Are we saying I don’t deserve to live in the region I grew up in, and I should have to move to the Midwest, for the good of society? Force my partner to give up their dream career? Should I give up my dreams of an early retirement from tech into a field that “does good”?
My parents have nothing saved up. 2008 made sure of that. Should I sacrifice the planned war chest I want to build for my parents’ eventual long term care?
And finally, if I do all of this, how much does the world improve by me doing this? Will <evil corp> collapse because I’m not there? Will my wage be distributed to the service workers or Will they go to the next eager applicant? Will my CEO pay more taxes or lose money because I’m not there?
And I hope you consider doing it sooner rather than later, since you may find, as I have, that working on stuff you’re passionate about is one of the ways to do your best work, which often can result in comp increases faster than working on something you care less about. :)
Good luck out there!
That's fine, but you realize your judgement is no more valid than anyone else's right? And to think otherwise is quite arrogant?
Not even this, it's just seeing a job exactly and only for what it is. As opposed to having some pompous judgemental false self-image of "helping the world" when in reality you are way too lazy and selfish to actually do that, like most other people.
It's a common leftist agenda to push and impose this culture of covering up mediocracy with virtue signalling pretending that it's actually a conscious choice and really better to make less money, not just being mediocre. The fight against rationalism and meritocracy, lazy intellectual leftists grasping at straws now starting to sound religious about how your soul will go to hell if you work for google. Give me a break
Because it's not the only driver, it's the most important driver of the money making part of your life. Which is turn is just a means to another end, and that end is your family, hobbies, self actualisation, experiencing the world etc.
Let's ignore there is not much value coming out of education and that people mostly succeed despite having to go through the grind of an antiquated education methodology (which is the only way to certain professions). Let's ignore that better teachers can actually go to private education and get a higher salary.
Software developers can create software solutions that automatically do the work of tons of people (think about how much time is saved by an online checkout vs maintaining a physical store with employees). It's obvious that software is a great way for companies that want to multiply their revenue and that's the most efficient way to generate value for society at scale.
It's therefore obvious that people capable of delivering that solution have more value compared to a teacher.
You may not like Amazon, but people derive benefits from Amazon all the time. They can get stuff directly at home in a day. They can pay online without even seeing a store.
That's a lot of units of small value for the general public being created by the Amazon employees and Amazon itself.
You may not like where society is going, but people choose with their own wallets what they want or not. This is pure democracy.
As a teacher, this is absolutely not true in the way you’re describing it.
Better to go for the high salary which you know will be stable, and will always "work" in the sense of giving benefit to your life. And take any awesome colleagues as a random happy accident and a pure bonus.
If anyone wonders where the stereotype of the soulless immigrant IT drone comes from, it's from places like this board perpetuating it.
You do not need 'generational wealth' to live a decent life: nobody is forcing you to help Facebook earn ad revenue on genocide[0] - you are making that choice yourself.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-...
It’s not selling your soul. It’s called being disillusioned with your impact on the world, a feeling that more and more people are feeling. Long gone are the days where you believed an individual could make a difference. At big corp, you are a small cog in the big machine. You are replaceable.
I’ve volunteered on political campaigns. I’ve volunteered for non profits as a developer. I’ve worked at startups that align closely with my moral views. Guess what? It’s all rotten. Nothing of meaning ever gets done, and the pay is pennies to boot. In the case of my volunteerism, pay equates to the pay of my full time colleagues that worked for those organizations.
So when faced with the choice of doing nothing on something you believe in for very little versus doing nothing on something you don’t for a lot, the choice is extremely easy. The choice is even easier if you factor in the level of privilege it takes to turn down generational money for someone else’s moral compass.
I’ve tried my best not to pass judgment onto you, but ask yourself — what kind of privilege affords you to think that the twenty year old second generation immigrants of today with no family wealth or financial lifeboat should give up their chance of securing generational (not even multigenerational) wealth in the richest country in the world just to achieve the same impact but feel better about themselves?