I’ve worked in SaaS tech my whole life. Been out of a job for a few months now, and while I do have debts to pay that would be much easier with a paycheck from the tech field, I wouldn’t be fulfilled with an office job.
The thing is, I’m not even sure what Id want to do yet. I’ve known my whole life that I was put here to help others, and there are so many causes out there I could work with that would help. So I think figuring that out is probably the very first step.
I’d also need to make above a certain threshold to be able to really function unless/even if I get a roommate (someone is checking my place out this month, so that might happen in January for me). Seems like figuring out what that number is between bills, rent, food, etc would be a good second step.
Beyond that, anyone else here made drastic career changes (I also don’t give a shit about having a “career”) that worked out for them like this? Would love any advice or tips! Tell me your story!
Thanks all, love you!
Graeber had a bit in Bullshit Jobs about how the more societally necessicary or directly helpful a job is, the worse the pay is generally. Teachers, Firefighters, ect. He posited it was because subconciously in an time with so many meaningless or actively alienating jobs, to have a career that has a visible impact on the world is considered part of the pay package.
I know its not really an answer to your question, but I work in public service and i think about that a lot.
i’d say cleaner/janitor/garbage collectors are the perfect example tbh
without those we’d all be dying of disease and they are some of the worst paying and looked down upon jobs
Similar in private sector stuff too.
I work for a firm that does wastewater, community water treatment, and storm water.
There isn’t a lot of money in it because treating wastewater better doesn’t provide more value to the company, they just have to hit a minimum standard to be able to operate.
We just make sure people have clean drinking water and that people aren’t polluting natural waterbodies which doesn’t generate profit so everybody up to the owner of the firm makes less money than my buddy who’s a rep for a major beer company so he goes to different bars and buys people drinks all day.
I remember some lolbert saying that people needed to own rivers and bodies of waters otherwise the market would never be able to recognize the need to keep water clean. It was as if I could no longer listen to any other argument they had in good faith, as if I were launched out of the dream of entertaining their POV
There’s some pretty notable exceptions to that, medical specialists and some engineering disciplines get paid a lot because they’re hard careers with very real demand. Not all engineering disciplines, of course, but nuclear engineers, chemical engineers, etc.
Even then though, I’d argue nuclear engineers are the least necessary type of engineer, but they get paid the highest. Civil engineers are the most necessary, and make the least money.
Same goes for doctors, GPs are more important than other types of doctors and make far less than others
Kinda depends on how you quantify how much they’re needed. Yes, civil engineers are necessary for every single state project ever, while a nuclear engineer is highly specialized, but I’d argue the nuclear engineers working on ITER and on safer, more affordable fission power have some of the most important jobs on earth. Maybe my point falls flat a bit since there also are lots of civil engineers working on those projects, though. It’s a bit harder to make that point for a neurosurgeon vs a GP because a GP does straight up save more lives than a neurosurgeon, and it’s not like the value of a life is proportional to how difficult it is to perform the surgery procedure that would save it.
I’m making a career move from bullshit tech sales to engineering. My prospects with a sought after degree from a highly ranked program pay what I made in my first year of tech sales without a degree or requirements to get licensed to eventually stamp plans that make me legally responsible for failures. End of career pay is about a quarter of what end of career pay in tech sales was. It’s absurd
He posited it was because subconciously in an time with so many meaningless or actively alienating jobs, to have a career that has a visible impact on the world is considered part of the pay package
oh my god i thought Graeber was some sort of marxist based on the amount people bring him up
He is, read Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value.
This analysis isn’t wrong, it’s just partial. There’s stuff like labor exploitation, gendered hyperexploitation, etc. But there’s also something where desirable jobs have less bargaining power because the labor pool is flooded (Firefighters are an example of this). Graeber’s argument is a non-structural articulation of the same phenomena. In the case of teachers, the amount we pay them is very much a decision made fairly arbitrarily. It’s mostly a matter of public investment, the decisions around which are massively over-determined to the point where you do have to talk about things like subconscious decision-making and cultural values.
If your issue is with taking the subconscious into account in your analysis, then you’re putting yourself in opposition to incredibly influential Marxists like Adorno.
but are the material considerations of systems of exploitation not more pressing? it just seems silly to be talking about subconsciousnesses when everything you said (and i’d tack on the capitalists’ control over bourgeois government) is so much more salient
e: but yeah you got me, it isn’t inherently marxian or not to talk about psychology shit.
I bailed on the 9-5 I guess about 15 years ago or so now, went nomadic and basically just been plucking along by the seat of my pants, sometimes I got lucky and made thousands in a week, sometimes I lived in a tent for months in the woods. Things got thrown off when I had to become a caregiver for my family but I’m kinda trying to get back to all that. But if I were to do it again back at that age, I’d go the American Beauty route for a while, find some job that pays your bills with set hours you can leave at the door, and then spend your free time helping people. Because I’m gonna be totally real, the one thing I’m sure of is that if you try and work within the system with an NGO or whatever, you’re still not gonna make that big of a difference. The system is designed to prevent that. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of people who signed up with an org and realized they wasted years of their lives. If you’ve got skills in the tech world, hone them, hide them, and make sure nothing gets traced back to you.
I could absolutely stand to be learning new tech skills, even if I already know i don’t gave the brain for learning to code. Appreciate your story!
Public utilities / municipalities work for city. They have a number of positions that require everything from maintenance to IT to secretary to operational to management. Lots of non political jobs that directly help and benefit people who live in your communuty. Maybe not the top top pay, but typically recession resistant, union, and competitive benifets.
Seconding this with all much emphasis as I can muster.
Many cities/counties have homeless services positions that involve working directly with homeless populations and connecting them to services (subsidized housing, job training, medical care, etc). There are grant administrators who learn the rules of unlocking govt money and distributing it to the needy.
I’ve about reached this point as well :/
Slowly learning that the org I’ve been volunteering for isn’t helping anyone whatsoever and knowing my current job does nothing but enrich shareholders to keep the wheels of capitalism churning eats away at me every day
Good news is we’re not alone I suppose
There’s always the nonprofit sector. It felt good I owing that whatever work I did would trickle into helping vulnerable people, no matter how little the work was.
Trouble is the serious downturn in the industry thanks to higher interest rates and stingier donors, so lots of people got laid off (like me) and there’s not as much hiring going on. Thanks JPow!!
I’ve been checking this job board for tech nonprofit listings, which given your SaaS background might have something for ya
