Most of us don't anymore. People have stopped having kids and stopped investing in their communities because work makes it impossible. I look to the future and see forty more years of hell, assuming climate disaster, preventable disease, or an impending WWIII don't kill me first.

The corruption and income inequality, in this country, disgusts me.

Thank you for being an active (i.e. moderator) part of the Beehaw project. It means a lot to me considering what you are going through.

When I was going through the toughest part of my life (I'll spare everyone the details), a friend of mine said to me: "This too shall pass". At the time, I felt like their statement was trite and dismissive.

Once I made it out into the other side of that shit, I realized that this was one of the best things that was said to me.

What you are going through is temporary. You will overcome this. There is always light at the end of the tunnel.

I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying

I hope this helps more than it hurts to hear, but there is no such thing as an ethical career. Capitalism always finds a way to usurp any meaningfully good gesture and corrupt it with a profit motive.

I work as a provider at a children's hospital, and I get to do a lot of good. But I also get to tell people that I can't help them, and not because I physically can't, but because they don't have the coverage. I am responsible for putting already economically disenfranchised families in even more debt, because Dad worked too hard and made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. The system makes us complicit.

I honestly don't know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point

I don't think anyone's job should be the only reason they get up in the morning. Even if you had the best job in the world....a job isn't a substitution for a life.

but I don't like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it's what others want to hear.

Ethics are subjective, and you have a right to stick to your own. However, I don't think you should feel guilty or bad about guilding your resume. Most. HR managers have no idea what they're asking for and as I said, no job is really ethical.

If my work knew about all the free healthcare I gave out, they would have some ethical complaints. And I have some ethical complaints for them pertaining to the price of healthcare. So as a compromise I give out as much free healthcare as I can get away with, and they don't ask too many questions. Sometimes a decent compromise is the best we can do as individuals in this country.

...want to accomplish things that improve the lives of people other than shareholders...

Have you looked into jobs in higher education?

The pay could be better, but it's not horrible. The benefits and working conditions are generally good. In my many years, I've never said 'wow, that's unethical'. Worst I've had is having to explain how certain policies, which sound good on the surface, are not equitable to all students in all social-economical situations and need to be revised.

Marketing, Communication, and Outreach are totally jobs in higher ed, and you're not trying to trick someone into buying crap: https://www.higheredjobs.com/admin/search.cfm?JobCat=37&StartRow=-1&SortBy=4&NumJobs=25&filterby=&CatType=

I don't like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it's what others want to hear.

I have much less work and job search experience than you but I can tell you what I learned from a year of searching for junior level work where I wanted:

There are two levels of recruitment, the first one are recruiters and HR people. Having experience and industry connections can allow you to bypass or shorten the amount of time you need to deal with these people (sometimes companies force every applicant to go through this because of policy), but most of them aren't interested in what you do or what you think of this job. They want to hear how you check the boxes that are placed in front of them. This is where you have to just make it as easy as possible to get through it, have prepared stories w/ embellishments, a fake nice attitude and reasons why you will lick company boot until it's polished (in a nice and not-sarcastic way). You highlight what you found interesting about the job/company and what they can get out of it. If you're starting without connections then it's the numbers game where you throw forward applications everywhere and hope something bites to even get to here. The whole thing feels so fake and full of deception and useless work to promote yourself and I hate it.

The second level is the people you're actually going to work with, around or under. There you still have to be positive, but you can be more genuine, they'd actually know what the job actually is, how they honestly feel about things, you can talk about things that actually matter to people working there rather than corporate overlords/shareholders (but don't explictly give reasons against that).

You'll be judged on both your character and whether you are as much as you said you were on your application.

Here is where you show off, or just give straight what you've done, what you can give and what you expect in return. This is where you ultimately decide whether you want this job assuming they didn't wear you out with the first level.

Yeah I expect I will have enough good reputation to move up as I get experience, but the whole process is full of bullshit and I can count on it not going away entirely. It's like you're on a treadmill where the goal is to sell yourself but crap is being thrown at your face every hour. As unwinnable as it might feel, you've only lost if you give up.

To add, as for why people willingly go through this in America (and Canada and elsewhere) is because there isn't really an alternative unless you are freelancing/self-employed, you work somewhere they take anyone with at least half a brain and two good legs, or you have a rich uncle who has a "job" for you whether you are smart and experienced or not.

Perhaps you should start your own consultancy company or something.

Echoing @LoamImprovement@beehaw.org, I don't anymore. My second biggest priority for the future is getting the fuck out of this country as soon as I have enough IT experience to find work overseas.

Maybe marketing is not the best work for you. It is by its nature doing the least work to sell the cheapest stuff possible for the most money to people who may not need it.

My wife always says find the intersection of your greatest skills to the world's greatest needs. I personally add... and that you can get paid for... preferably at least 2X median income. That typically means be a specialist, a manager, or run your own business.

welcome to the other side. this shit is just a stupid game. stop playing it. live on less. stop being a consumer. invest in real estate and become as self sufficient as possible. the best way to tell the world to fuck off is to stop playing the game.

I'm going to come at this from my own ethical and moral framework, and try to explain myself well enough to allow you to either agree or clearly see where we disagree.

I've always been of the mindset that if you have a good product, shockingly little marketing is required.

Marketing creates value in an ethical way when it helps match supply to demand, and reduces search friction for mutually beneficial transactions. Those mutually beneficial transactions distribute resources in a way that increases the overall utility in a society.

Thus, ethical marketing is still useful in an economy or specific markets where searching is difficult or costly. Plenty of useful products languish on the vine, and need consumer discovery in order to succeed.

As an example, some of my favorite restaurants I've ever eaten at have been forced to throw away food when there has been insufficient dining volume to use all those ingredients. Sometimes it's happened enough that the restaurant fails as a business. And restaurants as an industry are terrible with getting their product known to the public. So there's probably some benefit there in the act of marketing, advertising, and sales for those restaurants.

If you have your own ethical guideposts on which industries produce products that suffer from that problem (good product that
insufficient people know about, where producers are struggling), maybe focusing in on those fields/industries could be productive.

I want to help you, but first I want to know do you need more to vent or do you want practical solutions?

I'm happy to give you either.

/Sincere

It’s extremely difficult to have ethics while being involved in a capitalist system which is inherently unethical. Genuinely giving a damn and putting people ahead of profits is seen as a liability.

I’m sorry I don’t have any advice to give.