Which jobs would be morally rewarding?

Currently working in banking dealing with litigation. Having suffered from and recovered from Cancer in the last 2 years has caused me to rethink my life and occupation. I’d like to consider a job where I’m doing some good. Making a difference to other people or to the world in general.

Think like litter picker or volunteer counsellor, only the pay would have to be minimum 22k, which would be a substantial reduction to current salary.

Brainstorm with me, what might you suggest?

Park Ranger / Contract Killer.

If you’re in litigation, are you a lawyer? A friend is in-house lawyer for Barnados – every decent sized charity or business everywhere needs legal knowledge. If you’re not a lawyer, what skills do you have?

It’s that venn diagram of what you like, what you’re good at and what people will pay you enough to do.

Butcher ?. About £30-35k. Max for skilled with lots of experience and depending on where(London), up to maybe £55-60k.

Keeping the country fed.

Drop to 3 or 4 days a week and volunteer for the rest?

Nusring, nursing support or social care. We are desperate.

Butcher! 😂 thanks. Not sure that’s a step forward morally.

The only job I ever found tolerable was petrol station attendant. People were happy when you cleaned their windscreens and pumped up their tyres. I’ve moved on to better paying jobs, but the pay comes with dealing with unhappy people, giving them bad news.

Tony King is being interviewed on Five Live at the moment and he was just telling stories of when he was ‘Head of Disco’ at RCA records

I think you need to be aiming for something along these lines

I’d like to consider a job where I’m doing some good.

there’s a whole movement (“Earning to give”) based around doing whatever job earns the most in order that you can donate as much as possible (once you’ve paid you bills, etc!) so if you take that approach anything is an option!

Tax Inspector

morally rewarding and minimum salary of £22000 is pretty hard

You could do volunteer sessions at CAB with a view to getting work in the field of advice work but pay is low and jobs scarce

Nursing requires a 3 or 4 year degree although there is some shorter courses for folk with degrees.

Nursing support / social care pays less

A friend is in-house lawyer for Barnados – every decent sized charity or business everywhere needs legal knowledge.

Pretty much what I was going to say.  Not only as an in house lawyer, but things like dealing with gifts in wills because they often need legal knowledge when things get complicated.  IME the charity sector is often a flexible workplace too, so part time hours etc are more normal than in the commercial world.

You could pick a sector, rather than a particular job?

I work in a marketing department. Which in a lot of places, I probably would hate, but I work for a university, so I can console myself that at least I’m not trying to persuade people to buy more pointless plastic tat, or bending the rules on privacy and tracking.

Charity would be good too. I’d love to work for the National Trust.

If you have transferable skills, you will likely find charity jobs at around £25k

https://www.triodos.co.uk/careers

If your background is banking then there are options that have a much better purpose than making/losing boat loads of cash.

Working for companies that are involved in climate change mitigation? Although I work for BigTechUS, my customers are focused on building and connecting renewable energy sources.

Prime Minister? 😉

There’s been a right bunch of shysters over the last few years,so I think the whole country would love your strong and competent hand on the controls.

Could be very rewarding.

You have my vote. 😃

My family have chosen….

Son = Paramedic

Daughter = Nurse (Paediatric Palliative Care Team Lead)

Wife = Midwife (now more in leadership role)

My Sister = Housing Charity

My parents were both Police Officers

I’m the black sheep working for a big multinational company. However even my company is trying to do the right thing – decarbonising Energy and tackling the challenges of ensuing a stable energy distribution grid. Morally it sits ok with me just now.

Police?

I think this is the most practical so far:

If you’re in litigation, are you a lawyer? A friend is in-house lawyer for Barnados – every decent sized charity or business everywhere needs legal knowledge. If you’re not a lawyer, what skills do you have?

It’s that venn diagram of what you like, what you’re good at and what people will pay you enough to do.

Like the OP, I went through a process (although thankfully not as a result of cancer) of trying to work out what I could do to give the most societal benefit. My conclusion was that teaching/ education was probably the best. Unfortunately my skill set definitely doesn’t lie in that area.

I’m an engineer and ultimately now work in the EV industry which is a pretty good compromise for me. (Yes it would be far better it people left cars for public transport, but I could be working as an engineer in the oil and gas/ defense/ etc sectors.)

Charity sector jobs was my first thought, sounds like you have the skills and attitude they would be keen on.

Morally rewarding….. a union rep if you’re that way inclined 😉

I work in Civil Engineering in flood defence, and although it’s just another civil engineering design job really, I moved from working for housing developers as they are ****, to doing something that I believe is helping people. Even if most people we are helping just wants to moan at us or tell us how we’re doing it wrong….

I have a mate that is a solicitor for the Environment Agency, prosicuting people that fly tip and/or cause environmental damage or pollution.

there’s a whole movement (“Earning to give”) based around doing whatever job earns the most in order that you can donate as much as possible (once you’ve paid you bills, etc!) so if you take that approach anything is an option!

That was Sam Bankman-Fried’s justification / motivation for stealing $8bn of other people’s money at FTX!

Although once he had the cash, he just spent it on himself and his mates and forgot to actually do any good with any of it.

But, hey at least he tried 😉

Used to work in banking. After moving out I noticed two things.

– The more companies PR being ethical, the more unethical douchebags they seem to attract. Can’t explain why, maybe it provides cover for those that know they are douchebags.
– Contrary to the headlines, most UK banks are actually pretty ethical in comparison to other sectors.

Proceed with caution.

Morally rewarding….. a union rep if you’re that way inclined

Usually an unpaid role on top of existing duties.

Or did you mean union official? Not sure if you need specific quals for that TBH.

Police?

According to google, starting salad for a PCSO is £30k

According to google, starting salad for a PCSO is £30k

That’s quite a big carrot.

 litter picker

would be awful. Cleaning up after lazy gobshites would just depress me so much. Bring back captial punishment for things like throwing food wrappers out of a car window.

Nursing and care. Those guys have my utmost admiration, respect and thanks.

Farming.  proper farming, rather than owning land.

tbh, anything where you create something useful to a high standard.

Building and trades could be rewarding, if you were not working for one of the big developers and could spend the time and effort to make every job a good job.

That’s quite a big carrot.

And you get to carry the stick.

if you were not working for one of the big developers and could spend the time and effort to make every job a good job.

Assuming you didn’t have to compete on price for your work…..

I have a couple of roles, both of which I find rewarding. The main one of those is training. Simply can’t express how much satisfaction I get from seeing someone performing or achieving due to something I’ve helped them “get”.

I left a bank and went and worked for a university, a good chunk of my time wasn’t especially rewarding but a good chunk was- just helping young people make good decisions basically, and quite a lot of working with kids after they started at the uni. And every once in a while you’d get to do something that made a real difference for someone and it was pretty damn good

If you have some transferable skills then take them to a more ethical industry. You don’t need to throw it all out and do voluntary work or litter picking. I am an engineer by training and now do a broadly similar job that I used to do for a big commercial company but for smaller charities. The pay is a little lower than I could get elsewhere, but its still ok and there are other rewards. Pretty much everyone I work with is really nice, and generally a bit more relaxed and welcoming. No one is in it for the money so there is less competition and more collaboration. Its not saving lives or saving the world but I feel it is a nice place to be and does help people.

FWIW I’m an electronics engineer who left that industry to work for an international charity about 20 years ago and am still there.  What I would say is

The idea of donating some time to a charity while continuing your main earning job is a great one if you can manage.  There are a number of problems with charities that might mean it isn’t for you.  We’ve had a few high earners who wanted to do a bit of charity work before they retired but they didn’t last long.  It’s not for everyone

One of the problems is that if you are doing HQ type work rather than field work then you don’t really see the good stuff, you only see the difficult stuff.  The difficult stuff can be really quite painful.  You also see the ‘workings’ of a charity, what it really costs to do things, how much admin there is just to run a business compared to what people think you do.  It’s all necessary but might not be as motivating as you imagine

Another is that if you are used to a high level of support it might just not be there.  You need to be comfortable wearing many hats.  If that is you then you will love it but if it isn’t not fun.  You have to be used to old equipment, furniture, budgets

Don’t imagine that everyone is motivated towards a common great goal.  There are some brilliant, inspirational, fantastic people.  There are also jobsworths, people who couldn’t get jobs elsewhere, people who can’t manage, people on the edge.  It’s the same as everywhere

If you have the option of just dipping your toes in by volunteering a day a week/fortnight/month then that is a much better way in than a full commitment.  It’s not that I don’t recommend it, it’s just not for everyone.  FWIW I love my job but I’ve also spent a lot of time in the countries we work in so I’ve had the field work experience to keep me motivated through the more horrible stuff

there’s a whole movement (“Earning to give”) based around doing whatever job earns the most in order that you can donate as much as possible (once you’ve paid you bills, etc!) so if you take that approach anything is an option!

This is a fantastic idea really, especially if you pick carefully what the money is to be used for.   If you can save 1k and then give it to a small charity for something like – use this to take your staff out for a meal – then that is more appreciated than you can imagine.  I know it sounds mad to give money to a charity for pizza for their staff but there often isn’t money going around to lift people when they are overworked, burnt out, and to be given something just for the staff and not to be eaten up by the usual really helps. Or a friend recently had to deal with an inheritance and one of the charities only received a few thousand but that was enough above and beyond what they normally had to do remedial work on a caravan that they used to give holidays for people that would otherwise struggle.  If you can create your own small fund and then do the work to find good places to put it then you will find some great joy to be had.

I worked for a company getting long term unemployed people back in to stable jobs. And they also did quite a bit of work rehabilitating offenders and people with substance abuse issues. That was rewarding. Now in public transport which is quite a bit different but has a similar moral purpose (for me at least) in terms of levelling access to opportunity for some of the less fortunate people in society.

If the job you are doing isn’t actually morally wrong in your mind then the best you can do for others is to earn as much as you possibly can and give away everything beyond what 22k would give you.

But no one ever is going to want to do that 😂

gordimhor

Full Member

Tax Inspector

You’d think….

Nearly got it right, bloody “progress”!