Hacker News Reader

Personally I've estimated the quality of life I get from working on something fun and meaningful to be about 12-15k/yr. That's the gap between "dream work" and something like generic CRUD business logic type stuff. A huge part of that is the "dream work" also being 40h with decent flex hours, good coworkers, and good management. That 12-15k number is potentially upward of 40k if lacking those.

You spend too much time at work to not enjoy it. And I value my own time and enjoyment highly. I wouldn't want to sell it for less. The lower side of the software engineer payscale is still enough that I have more than I want day-to-day. The main limits it imposes on me are house/car/early retirement related things.

> Also, I won't get into numbers about how much less.

They get into numbers in the second paragraph; up to 23% of lifetime earnings.

> The key metric would be, how many people act on this impulse.

We can get a rough tally of how many are acting on it from labor stats[1]. And I'm assuming all of these are what people view as "meaningful" work; I work in finance and find it plenty meaningful but I imagine that's a minority view.

Quoth the BLS:

Total employment: 144,733,270

Community and social service: 2,171,820

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: 1,951,170

Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: 8,646,730

Healthcare Support Occupations: 4,117,450

Education, Training, and Library Occupations: 8,779,780

So if those broad areas hit the "meaningful" buttons, you're looking at about 17% of the workforce.

> What could be less meaningful then getting money for doing nothing?

Totally had that doing government contracting. The trouble is you realize it's a trap: if you ever need a real job your lack of doing anything means you're fucked.

> Yet, that's what a lot of people want, such as anyone who buys a lottery ticket.

More realistically, anyone who is investing passively. But that's not a job or your profession, and when people talk about "meaning" they're asking "who am I?" If you're a carpenter, your identity is wrapped up in the houses you build, for instance.

What the article is missing is the classic dichotomy of work to live vs. live to work.

If your profession is who you are, meaningful work is more important in shaping your identity.

But if it's not, the "work to live" paradigm, you're making money to support something else. If you're working to take care of your family, you're a father or a mother first. If you're working to support your art or projects, you're an artist or an engineer regardless of your paid job title.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

23% is remarkably little considering compound interest and the marginal utility of money. It sounds a little bit like the old nugget, "how much money do you need to retire?" and the answer is always "a little bit more than I have".

The citation is provided, with a link to the study:

> Nine out of 10 Americans say they would give up a significant portion of their paycheck–up to 23% of their lifetime earnings–if they could swap their day job for more meaningful work, according to the Harvard Business Review.

I think most Americans who say that are already in a position of privilege. It's pretty easy to take a salary hit and teach school children about rockets if your job at raytheon already bought your house and put your kids through college.

Sure people in prison SAY they want to leave, but how many of them ACT on it? That’s the REAL question.

Surely getting a lower paying job is easier than breaking out of prison. Not to mention that they aren't going to send dogs after you in the woods to get you back behind your old desk.