Tonight's realization:
20 years in the tech industry has made me believe that it's not worth doing something unless I can affect millions of people at once. But most real socioeconomic issues can't be solved like that: they need lots and lots of help from individuals and small groups. It's not a failure to "only" help one person.
@hellamander oh man I have this disease too! I have to force myself to remember that small, deep impacts like volunteer work are also valuable. (Also, for me it helps to remember that most of my "high risk high impact" professional career haven't actually amounted to much. It's better to meaningfully help 10 people than try and fail to help 10 million...)
@hellamander @jjwolverine i bet this happens more at google than other places ("i don't get out of bed for less than a million users!")
@tanakiwah @hellamander well, certainly the shops with big user numbers. You can tell from the decisions they make that Facebook and Twitter also think like this.
@jjwolverine Man yes, especially that last part.