I have an engineering degree from a very respectable university, and straight out of that have been in 2 separate jobs where I was creating… nothing. In the past, you had jobs with tangible value, like postman, journalist, mechanic etc. Now with rapid individual and corporate dematerialisation (owning less ‘stuff’, replacing it with technology) the well-paying industries have become service based software platforms, where the tangible value created only comes in making other companies more efficient, and thus making their shareholders richer.
I have been in 2 very well paying service-based software jobs and it’s unbelievably depressing working day-in, day out creating absolutely nothing of benefit, knowing my mark on the world comes in the form of code which will be overwritten in 6 months. And it’ll only get more and more like this, whilst other jobs become devalued and more things become automated. I’m changing careers to real estate because of this, to create beautiful homes for people far away from the corporate world. Anyone else have this experience?