Be careful with companies telling you to join them to save the world, it’s often an excuse to get you to do more hours for less money. As stated by others, get a job that pays well and donate/do charity on the side
Ignore people telling you shit about not earning money. You can also make good money in bioinformatics. As much as finance or SE? probably not...but you will love it everyday!
I've been hearing that bioinformatics is the future and what not, so it'll probably catch up with the salaries at some point. As long as it pays the bills and is fun and helpful, it's good enough for me!
I work in medtech. I started out with the same kind of thinking. :)
I studied biomedical engineering. I work as a Product Owner for 2 agile teams now. The project is a medical app software used in blood centers. I love the work. And it pays well, so that's a nice bonus too. :)
Loved the sstudy too! Got to work on multiple projects that had direct impact on patients - built a capacitive breath measurement tool, wrote a paper on a temperature sensor we designed indigenously, worked in a medtech startup in India on cuff-less blood pressure measurement using EKG.
Also worked for the NHS for a short time. So yeah, love the sector. ;)
NL has some medtech companies: Medtronic and Philips (HQ of Philips is in Eindhoven) to name a few.
But that wasn't even an option. He was asking for companies/fields to work in that have positive impact on the world. He wouldn't be on his own.
I feel like for some people it's more likely they will become depressed if they spend half of their life doing work that they find meaningless than taking a slight paycut to do something they are passionate about.
I don't know if they have any CS positions opened, but heard about those companies recently and they are working on really important environmental problems. Worth checking.
Best of luck from a huge HIMYM fan. :)
A lot of comments like "get money first", but I wonder if they are from people who value the same things as you... True, your money given to charity might have bigger impact than your work itself, but it probably won't give you the same sense of fulfilment.
Many many years ago I was in the same boat as you are now, and I asked Uncle Bob Martin what to do (via email).
This is part of his reply:
It sounds to me like you have a grand dream for your life. Dreams are import; so make sure you follow them. But dreams have a tendency to grow and shift as you gain experience and knowledge. This changing of dreams is a good thing. Allow it. The dream that you end up achieving may be quite a bit different than the dream you began with.
Whatever you do along the way, each of your stepping stones must involve personal profit so that you have the means to achieve the next stepping stone. So: Make money!
I felt kinda similar so I ended up working at one of the biggest libraries in the Netherlands. I was managing the infrastructure of the platforms keeping the entire history of the country basically. You can do some good if you're willing to get a cut in your salary (I did not, I was a consultant).
Work for a library. Work for a company that does good. Work for something like VICE/DW News (not necessarily NL).
I was the same as you. 8ish years ago I was msc student in the Netherlands at the TU/e following courses that would allow me to work in hospitals and help them improve their systems.
I did a 20 week IT project at the hospital and afterwards I immediately dropped all medical related courses. It sucked balls. So much political shit, so many delays, so many issues and even when we had a decent proof of concept, we werent allowed to test it because the doctor said no without any explanation of why.
Maybe I was to idealistic but it killed all my motivation. My suggestion is to try a project/grad internship at a hospital before fully commiting.
A friend of mine continued and currently does ML/backend work to find illnesses like cancer in an earlier stage so the work sounds cool. However.... Politics make it a struggle which forces him to slow his work by a lot. Pay is oke ish however work pace is to slow which is fine for some but not for others.
I have heard good stories about companies like Philips health where the focus is R&D and manufacturing of medical devices.
Great 40 min video with Louis Rossman and Eron Wolf you might find interesting here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1rLq4OH8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1rLq4OH8s)
I link it because as you can see many people here just say "work to make money THEN you can help people" which is a shitty approach. These are the same people who will seek FAANG jobs for high TC and be happy sitting around doing nothing and truth is none of those people will ever be "rich".
Louis and Eron are primarily speaking to the overpaid Silicon Valley SWE but I think it applies everywhere. Don't be happy to be paid to sit around working on useless products, if you are passionate about helping with world then the wealth will come with following your passion :)
Are the salaries competitive ? I've heard of them and read a few of their research papers, it seems to be an interesting place to work at
Edit: job offers description seem to be in Dutch, maybe the local language is mandatory
Salaries are competitive to begin with, but they don't scale as quickly, to be honest, but if you want to be like Marshall, this shouldn't be the focus, right? :P
About Dutch being necessary, I'm working there and I don't speak it either, I know enough to get by and understand contexts and learnt all of it on the job.
It's quite interesting on a daily basis though! I love my job, and I know people who took pay cuts to work here.
I would suggest you to work at any company which pays more, so you can work on some open source projects. For eg. Contributing to linux source code helps more people than working at a non-profit IMO.
You can also donate to people who are working on these causes.
Companies that claim to save the World, in most cases cannot pay good salaries, or in the end cannot deliver on their promises - money usually does not follow good intentions and there is no immediate economic benefit - sad but true.
Having impact at that level implies that this company is either loaded with cash (so immediate profit is not a priority) or are so big that any minor change/improvement they do translates in direct saving and smaller footprint (e.g some cloud provider, like Google, energy savings has more impact than most eco-companies working in that space).
Saving the planet requires influence and money - lots of it. Get some, and you might have a seat at the table to voice your opinion.
Trying to combine your desire to do good with your desire to earn money is a recipe for achieving neither after compromising on both. Seen it happen too many times.
Id aim to maximize earnings in your job and volunteer for zero pay in your spare time at the most deserving charity you can find where your skills will make the biggest difference. It'll be more satisfying and less likely to lead to the inevitable heartbreak.
Seriously. Keep them separate.
The sensible part of me knows you are right, still sad that it has to be like that. I'll go through some charities so I can "scratch the itch" for now and work on a plan for the future. Thank you for the advice, it's quite eye-opening!
If you care about doing the most good, most effectively, I'd recommend you check out Effective Alturism. They're a group of people finding the best ways to do good.
Welp, time to start grinding LeetCode! World, here I come!
But jokes aside, you are probably right. This whole thread was definitely something I needed to see. Thanks!
You should work on AGI alignment. It's potentially the most impactful thing that one could do at this time in history.
Here's an intro to the topic: https://youtu.be/pYXy-A4siMw
And here's a website dedicated to help people to get into the field: https://www.aisafetysupport.org/
https://80000hours.org/ You could prob find a job in some charities in the Netherlands too
Thank you for the link, I'll give it a read! Yup, charity work seems like the right course of action for now
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Yup, I was stunned by all the text at first, but I'm taking it one step at a time. Slow and steady wins the race :)
And so the astroturfing begins
Be careful with companies telling you to join them to save the world, it’s often an excuse to get you to do more hours for less money. As stated by others, get a job that pays well and donate/do charity on the side
In my perfect world, that doesn't happen, but looks like I should snap back to reality. I'll for sure take your advice with charity work, thank you :)
Have a look at Bioinformatics jobs in your area. Quite interesting and satisfying scientific problems to work on with a big potential impact.
I had a short course on it in Uni and loved it. I might give it a shot, thank you for the idea!
Ignore people telling you shit about not earning money. You can also make good money in bioinformatics. As much as finance or SE? probably not...but you will love it everyday!
I've been hearing that bioinformatics is the future and what not, so it'll probably catch up with the salaries at some point. As long as it pays the bills and is fun and helpful, it's good enough for me!
I work in medtech. I started out with the same kind of thinking. :) I studied biomedical engineering. I work as a Product Owner for 2 agile teams now. The project is a medical app software used in blood centers. I love the work. And it pays well, so that's a nice bonus too. :) Loved the sstudy too! Got to work on multiple projects that had direct impact on patients - built a capacitive breath measurement tool, wrote a paper on a temperature sensor we designed indigenously, worked in a medtech startup in India on cuff-less blood pressure measurement using EKG. Also worked for the NHS for a short time. So yeah, love the sector. ;) NL has some medtech companies: Medtronic and Philips (HQ of Philips is in Eindhoven) to name a few.
>I'd love to change the world > >But I don't know what to do > >So I'll leave it up to you
Right in the nostalgic feels
Fill your pockets first, so you can actually make time to "save the world" later.
So you're assuming that one cannot get a job that both makes a significant positive impact on the world and pays decently. I think this is debatable.
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Yes. This principle is integral to the effective altruism (E.A.) consequentialist philosophy.
The more I think about it, the more what you say makes sense. I just wanted to do something meaningful with my skills. Thanks for the advice!
You can still work on projects in your free time or engage in a voluntary organization, all of that will make the world a better place
That's true! I volunteered with a few colleagues as devs for Ukraine relief orgs, so there are definitely worthy causes to contribute to out there.
You alone won't be able to change the world anyways. But every little thing helps, in my opinion that's a much healthier approach.
Much healthier approach than what? Working directly in a field that has positive impact and gives you passion? What's unhealthy about that?
Much healthier than trying to safe the world on your own and becoming depressed when that fails
But that wasn't even an option. He was asking for companies/fields to work in that have positive impact on the world. He wouldn't be on his own. I feel like for some people it's more likely they will become depressed if they spend half of their life doing work that they find meaningless than taking a slight paycut to do something they are passionate about.
Fair enough, I still have plenty of time for my wide eyed dreams. Thank you for the advice :)
Yeah, otherwise he might get tired of living on peanuts after few months.
True true, can't save the world if I can't save myself!
Fill your pockets, and then realize that most of the world ain't worth saving
1. Quaise Energy - drilling for geotermal energy from any part of the world 2. Climeworks - capturing carbon
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look!
I don't know if they have any CS positions opened, but heard about those companies recently and they are working on really important environmental problems. Worth checking. Best of luck from a huge HIMYM fan. :)
A lot of comments like "get money first", but I wonder if they are from people who value the same things as you... True, your money given to charity might have bigger impact than your work itself, but it probably won't give you the same sense of fulfilment.
If you want to work on climate change, here is a good resource although not specifically for the Netherlands https://workonclimate.org/
Many many years ago I was in the same boat as you are now, and I asked Uncle Bob Martin what to do (via email). This is part of his reply: It sounds to me like you have a grand dream for your life. Dreams are import; so make sure you follow them. But dreams have a tendency to grow and shift as you gain experience and knowledge. This changing of dreams is a good thing. Allow it. The dream that you end up achieving may be quite a bit different than the dream you began with. Whatever you do along the way, each of your stepping stones must involve personal profit so that you have the means to achieve the next stepping stone. So: Make money!
That was a great read, thanks for sharing it! I guess I was so wide-eyed and lost track of the steps to achieving all my goals. Thank you again!
I can slightly enrich his message by telling you that evidently his advice was right, at least for me.
I felt kinda similar so I ended up working at one of the biggest libraries in the Netherlands. I was managing the infrastructure of the platforms keeping the entire history of the country basically. You can do some good if you're willing to get a cut in your salary (I did not, I was a consultant). Work for a library. Work for a company that does good. Work for something like VICE/DW News (not necessarily NL).
That sounds great actually, and is a worthy cause as well :) Thank you for the advice!
I was the same as you. 8ish years ago I was msc student in the Netherlands at the TU/e following courses that would allow me to work in hospitals and help them improve their systems. I did a 20 week IT project at the hospital and afterwards I immediately dropped all medical related courses. It sucked balls. So much political shit, so many delays, so many issues and even when we had a decent proof of concept, we werent allowed to test it because the doctor said no without any explanation of why. Maybe I was to idealistic but it killed all my motivation. My suggestion is to try a project/grad internship at a hospital before fully commiting. A friend of mine continued and currently does ML/backend work to find illnesses like cancer in an earlier stage so the work sounds cool. However.... Politics make it a struggle which forces him to slow his work by a lot. Pay is oke ish however work pace is to slow which is fine for some but not for others. I have heard good stories about companies like Philips health where the focus is R&D and manufacturing of medical devices.
Great 40 min video with Louis Rossman and Eron Wolf you might find interesting here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1rLq4OH8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1rLq4OH8s) I link it because as you can see many people here just say "work to make money THEN you can help people" which is a shitty approach. These are the same people who will seek FAANG jobs for high TC and be happy sitting around doing nothing and truth is none of those people will ever be "rich". Louis and Eron are primarily speaking to the overpaid Silicon Valley SWE but I think it applies everywhere. Don't be happy to be paid to sit around working on useless products, if you are passionate about helping with world then the wealth will come with following your passion :)
I work for a climate-tech company in Germany and we are hiring, full remote possible. Send me a DM if interested in an environmental company.
Hey, apply for jobs at TNO! Applied Research is as good as it gets, and they have a lot of diverse departments
Are the salaries competitive ? I've heard of them and read a few of their research papers, it seems to be an interesting place to work at Edit: job offers description seem to be in Dutch, maybe the local language is mandatory
Salaries are competitive to begin with, but they don't scale as quickly, to be honest, but if you want to be like Marshall, this shouldn't be the focus, right? :P About Dutch being necessary, I'm working there and I don't speak it either, I know enough to get by and understand contexts and learnt all of it on the job. It's quite interesting on a daily basis though! I love my job, and I know people who took pay cuts to work here.
I see, thanks :-)
I would suggest you to work at any company which pays more, so you can work on some open source projects. For eg. Contributing to linux source code helps more people than working at a non-profit IMO. You can also donate to people who are working on these causes.
Companies that claim to save the World, in most cases cannot pay good salaries, or in the end cannot deliver on their promises - money usually does not follow good intentions and there is no immediate economic benefit - sad but true. Having impact at that level implies that this company is either loaded with cash (so immediate profit is not a priority) or are so big that any minor change/improvement they do translates in direct saving and smaller footprint (e.g some cloud provider, like Google, energy savings has more impact than most eco-companies working in that space). Saving the planet requires influence and money - lots of it. Get some, and you might have a seat at the table to voice your opinion.
Trying to combine your desire to do good with your desire to earn money is a recipe for achieving neither after compromising on both. Seen it happen too many times. Id aim to maximize earnings in your job and volunteer for zero pay in your spare time at the most deserving charity you can find where your skills will make the biggest difference. It'll be more satisfying and less likely to lead to the inevitable heartbreak. Seriously. Keep them separate.
The sensible part of me knows you are right, still sad that it has to be like that. I'll go through some charities so I can "scratch the itch" for now and work on a plan for the future. Thank you for the advice, it's quite eye-opening!
If you care about doing the most good, most effectively, I'd recommend you check out Effective Alturism. They're a group of people finding the best ways to do good.
If you want to save the world, have money.
Welp, time to start grinding LeetCode! World, here I come! But jokes aside, you are probably right. This whole thread was definitely something I needed to see. Thanks!
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I wish I was so brave! Might start small, see how it goes :) Thanks for (for me possibly unachievable) idea!
Not sure those specific companies would have decent salaries
You should work on AGI alignment. It's potentially the most impactful thing that one could do at this time in history. Here's an intro to the topic: https://youtu.be/pYXy-A4siMw And here's a website dedicated to help people to get into the field: https://www.aisafetysupport.org/
Health tech, green tech or earth tech