the average defense job is the exact opposite of fulfilling and meaningful

Not if you like showing roughly the same set of slides 5x per week in meetings with roughly the same set of people in each one

That's the line they gave all my peers who went into public interest and non-profits. Most of them left from burnout or because the low pay and high demands were exploitative.

Here's the trick these mission-oriented employers don't want you to know: you can use the freedom that money affords in order to build meaningful and fulfilling aspects into your life outside of work.

this is what church is for

That’s what they want you to believe so they can pay you less than Google. Meanwhile the googlers got rich and are doing fulfilling and meaningful work on their own pace once they quit.

If you think the gov’t work is actually more meaningful and fulfilling than what anyone at Google has been doing, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Working on banner ads is the kind of thing you will tell your grandkids about.

The only folks I know who were doing actual meaningful gov’t work couldn’t tell their grandkids about it either. Still classified.

I assume people find meaning in different ways (perhaps I was being unfair to the tech-advertising business). I've always thought the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, NASA, or the National Park Service might potentially be amazing places to work, depending on the role. Looking at a full list of federal government agencies it doesn't seem crazy to me that people could find meaningful work in some of the others.

Nothing as meaningful as maintenance programming at Google, of course. At least the paychecks wouldn't be as meaningful.

That’s a good reason to pay more sense you want the best and brightest to work on fulfilling and meaningful problems

Defense contractors don’t give the government a discount for “fulfilling and meaningful” projects. It’s “f-you, pay me.”

Why should employees of that industry give the employer a discount?

My mortgage is meaningful too

Shame my mortgagor doesn't accept fulfillment and meaningfulness as payment options.