I wish I could upvote and disagree. It’s important to discuss this, but “rounding to zero” is a mistake, and can easily be the source of burnout and dissatisfaction.
If your work literally doesn’t change the probability of success, you’re probably right to leave. Whether it moves from 51% to 51.0001% or from 5% to 5.0001% (or from 0.1% to 0.1001%) is actually the reverse—you make MORE of a difference at the lower levels of probability of success.
Also, lessons from other kinds of battlefield should be remembered. Most soldiers don’t fight for freedom, for resources, or for ideals—they fight for their squadmates, and for the expectations of their family/friends. Doing work that makes the short-term better is very motivating and valuable. Doing work that is short-term useful and long-term neutral-to-very-slightly-positive, and gives you status and lets you hang out with people you like is probably more satisfying and motivating than 90% of humanity has.
I wish I could upvote and disagree. It’s important to discuss this, but “rounding to zero” is a mistake, and can easily be the source of burnout and dissatisfaction.
If your work literally doesn’t change the probability of success, you’re probably right to leave. Whether it moves from 51% to 51.0001% or from 5% to 5.0001% (or from 0.1% to 0.1001%) is actually the reverse—you make MORE of a difference at the lower levels of probability of success.
Also, lessons from other kinds of battlefield should be remembered. Most soldiers don’t fight for freedom, for resources, or for ideals—they fight for their squadmates, and for the expectations of their family/friends. Doing work that makes the short-term better is very motivating and valuable. Doing work that is short-term useful and long-term neutral-to-very-slightly-positive, and gives you status and lets you hang out with people you like is probably more satisfying and motivating than 90% of humanity has.
I appreciate the comment and think I agree with most of it. Was there anything in the post that seemed to disagree with this reasoning?