Ask HN: How much does “purpose” matter in a job?

The more you have, the less relevant getting more is.

At least for me, once I was makimg 'enough' per year, earning more was nice, but I didn't actively seek it out. Finding work that made me feel good was more important (but, when I was starting out, getting a paycheck made me feel good, so the particular work wasn't as important). For me, enough was maxing 401k, making some extra mortgage payments, having a decent and growing emergency fund, and not worrying about regular expenses.

In current society, if you have a house and an education, things are so easily available, then you can live a beautiful life on 15k a year (I do this right now, paying $950/m in LA). You could rightfully claim that housing is very essential, and is hugely expensive. However, houses are not actually expensive or difficult to make. Having a property in a certain desirable areas (which have been purposely prevented from expanding naturally) is the limiting factor. Also, IMO, a lot of property in desirable areas is in a bubble.

Regarding education, high level educations are increasingly becoming democratized through the internet. I have very high hopes for the future of education, where skilled teachers are able to make the highest quality content, made available for very low costs to millions. Having professors with doctorates was cool, because they meme-plexed information, but they were often limited on bandwidth. Search engines are making it increasingly easy to memeplex a field of knowledge without a hugely skilled person's assistance.

Hit the nail right on the head.

My boss is a boy scout troop leader, he regularly goes out to the gatherings, and I can relate his mood to how their last meetup went. His job has 0 impact on it.

Keep looking, something will fill that void soon.

I, myself, found that making bread for community kitchens sorta did it, not the act of making it but seeing people eat it, and taste it, was very fulfilling. You don't have to do it for charity, there may be other things that tickle your fancy.