I choose not to work at places like linked in, meta, or any place that accepts Saudi or Israeli funding. It makes it a little harder to find a job, but i sleep better at night.

For similar reasons, I have been working in the public sector (Australian state government) for the past 5 years and couldn’t be happier.

I’m lucky that I’m in a team which is hands on and does a lot of very interesting things. From building CRUD apps which are used in management and response to bushfires (wildfires) to more interesting things like building a datalake which amalgamates and stores weather data from multiple sources to building near real time CDC pipelines and making our transactional data available to our in house team of data scientists who then use that data to do fascinating stuff that eventually results in for example making sure that our response to bushfires takes into account the impact and safety of endangered species.

And when I look at the underlying data and the trends and and projections of just how bad bushfires are going to get in the next 30 years and how we must be so much nimbler and smarter just to survive, the work takes on a whole new level of meaning.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times the internal bureaucracy absolutely drives me mad. And I am aware that I could be earning much more in the private sector. But I get to work with a team who are really passionate and enthusiastic about their job, and I get to sleep at night knowing that unlike my previous jobs, this time I am not just making someone who is already uber rich, richer.

If you had told the teenage Utilitarian me that I would one day work for, and enjoy working for, government, I would have thought hell must have frozen over.

In years to come you will be so thankful that you took that path.

As they say, better to be a poor master than a rich slave.

I wouldn’t lump in Israel in, but good for you.