There’s something powerful about being part of something larger than yourself, and knowing that the work you do is contributing to some positive change in the world. And not just in the delusional “making the world a better place through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code re-use and extensibility” sense.

A lot of us want to feel that this planet is tangibly improved in some small way for our having been in it. The conventional wisdom is that this sentiment is especially strong among many Gen Z folks and millennials, who apparently aren’t content with killing golf, Applebees and diamonds.

But not all of them. Maybe that’s why companies like Purdue Pharma, Philip Morris and Palantir exist: so that people who are comfortable making the world a vastly more awful place can find meaning too.