No. I just try to work places that don’t actively work to harm the world.

I work in a slaughterhouse so I’d say my job is important till all of humanity goes vegetarian (which I don’t think even the most diehard vegetarian or vegan believes will happen in my lifetime). Am I proud of it? No, but I’m not proud of anything I do.

My job is important but I feel that either I’m not equipped enough for it or that my users don’t get value out of it.

Without getting too specific, I’m a data engineer that is doing ETL work for maintenance data. So it could allow the business users to optimize the business and potentially lower a large carbon footprint while also saving the company millions.

I have a devops background so I really just need to git gud at databases and data engineering

I haven’t had a job that should exist since I was a tutor in college. Every position since then was either a fake busywork job, or tech support for people in fake busywork jobs. =/

Yup. Psychiatric nurse. I think the field needs a lot of advancements and a lot of the tools I have are barbaric but I’m doing the best I can with what I have and trying to contribute to my field by teaching and pushing for advancements.

Yes and yes. I’m a health inspector.

Would absolutely not do it for free. There’s a lot more that I do than just inspecting restaurants and beauty premises:

• inspection accommodations (hotels, motels, rooming houses, student forms, hostels, camps)

• respond to environmental complaints (dumping, pollution of storm water, failing septics, installation of septics)

• residential complaints (the worst!! People don’t want to talk to each other and problem solve like adults so they threaten each other by dragging me in to sort their shit out for them. If they don’t get the result they want, it’s my fault 🙄)

• emergency response (we suddenly had importance when covid came around, but the nation still wouldn’t acknowledge us as important because we’re not in the “response” side like nurses and doctors. We’re prevention, and nobody cares about us; bushfires, floods, air quality)

• mosquito detection (for diseases they carry and treat the areas that we find have carrier mozzies for diseases like Japanese encephalitis, Ross River, etc.)

• pest control, hoarding, land use, subdivisions, swimming pools, drinking water quality, disposal of dead carcasses, cemeteries, exhumation, outbreaks like gastro, too many things to list. We’re pretty much involved in everything that affects human health.

But we’re underpaid, underappreciated, perpetually short staffed and quickly burning out, and mostly unknown to those who don’t run businesses that require council registration by law.

No, but yes. I was laid off. But, it was because my employer was a federal contractor in the USA who suffered at the hands of DOGE. We were doing good stuff, actively helping others, so I was quite proud of it. It was also important, important enough that people could literally be dying – other than the fact that the people who managed to stay behind and are now doing the job of 3 or more folks are managing to barely keep things going.

Open source developer.

I’d say it’s relatively unimportant in the greater scheme of things; nobody dies and the world would keep going even if I stopped.

But I’m mostly proud to do it and I enjoy working in the non-profit sector, especially since I don’t have an asshole boss or corporate interests to worry about.

On the flip side, I make less money than I would in the corporate space. But I suppose I value the freedom more than the money

My job is important within the company, but that’s about it.
I’m not proud to do it though, just mostly amazed I got this far at all. Impostor syndrome runs strong with me and even after all these years there’s still a nagging worry that they’ll find out that I’ve been faking my competence.

911 dispatch, yeah, kind of important.

Wish I could do it for just fire and EMS, and not police, but that’s the way the system works, and the most interesting calls I get are for police I suppose.

In a more ideal world where people don’t have to work just to survive and make ends meet, I probably would still do it, just not on a full-time schedule. It’s one of those things that needs to get done but that absolutely not everyone is cut out for, so I think it’s important for those of us who can hack it to step up to the plate to do it.

As far as whether I’m proud of what I do, well I’m proud that I get to help people, I’m proud of the skills I have that allow me to do it well, but otherwise it’s just a job, I don’t brag about what I do (although I do have a ton of interesting stories from it that I like to share)

And since it is a full time gig and I have tons of things I’d rather be doing, I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to retire someday and never having to go into the office again.

I have a great job, I’m reaching the end of a successful career and I’m very happy with the choices I’ve made in my professional life.

But my job is NOT important and I’m not proud of it. I’m only proud of having the honesty to do what I’m paid to do well. Beyond that, my job is a means to an end: supporting my loved ones. They are what’s important. Nobody goes to their grave reflecting on what they did for a living.

Yes. I’m an IT sysadmin for the last fully independent local newspaper in my country.
It’s pretty challenging because a newspaper needs special systems that are a clusterfuck of tech debt that the suppliers don’t fix anymore, since the entire industry is dying.

Its not important at all. My job brings no value to the betterment of humanity. But in private i hope i can develope some free software to better ppls lives ^^

I work for a company that makes lab and medical testing equipment, if you’ve had a medical emergency that required blood tests then odds are good our equipment was used. It feels good knowing that I work somewhere that has a positive impact on many people’s lives.

But, I’ve met our company president and he’s a complete piece of shit. I almost quit because the idea of making him even richer makes my stomach turn. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find someplace else that will pay me what I need to continue to support my family… so I look at the positive things that we do and try to forget the psycho.

No and no. I help produce luxury goods for obscenely rich people… 2 units of our product, depending on configuration, is my entire years salary…