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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, meaning comes from within: finding interesting problems that matter to you. If you know what that is then getting there is much easier.

If you think you really do like LevelDB try writing your own version of it from scratch. This will test your understanding of the fundamental principles. It will also test your motivation. Then try to explain to someone else how to do what you did.

Once you truly understand LevelDB then pick a thorny problem they are working on, propose a solution, gather feedback, and solve it. Wash, rinse, repeat. A couple years from now you could be the LevelDB expert you've always wanted to be.

Then a few years down the road maybe you'll find some key insight that everyone was missing and write your own database that solves that particular issue and you'll be the one that someone else is looking up to.

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His problem though is not with side projects is it? It's the 40 hours cranking out meaningless crap in the office that's the issue here.

I've had no problem finding meaning in my side projects - the job I do for money though always seems to degenerate into a daily grind.

I think it does have to do with side projects if that's the avenue OP wants to take to find meaningful work.

> I would love to contribute to such a project and I always envy and look up to Jeff Dean

Instead of being jealous, be the Jeff Dean you want to be!

> Maybe I should get a job in a company which has a well established product (preferably something used by developers) and has some room for creativity?

I'm being glib but it's honest advice: one way to get the kind of work you want is to be the expert people need. Rarely does a team hire someone from outside with zero knowledge of a critical, low-level system and pay them to learn it. More often than not they want to hire someone with the skills and experience they're lacking.

The hard part is finding the motivation. A good chunk of line-of-business applications are valuable but do not require, "creative solutions." They need people who understand the problem domain so well that they can translate business rules into systems and can anticipate users' needs.

The low-level work is a lot more fun and personally satisfying for people but you have to be pushing the envelope to get it. If you have the personal motivation to be obsessed with LevelDB for a couple of years before landing that dream job... success may be much more likely.

meaning from the human perspective also comes from within, you can complain about the culture at a job, but you also have to recognize that you are a part of it, and if it's not meaningful to you, you can either leave, or learn about people and try to lead by example and determine if they can change with you in a way that respects your own experience and understanding and reflects theirs. This is so the culture can be community strengthening and building, and allows people to grow in ways they choose, enough to feel like they are more than a software component (cog in the machine, etc)

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