Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

Emotional impact & meaning of work

• Many relate to realizing past work was pointless or never shipped; feelings range from anger and grief to relief at avoiding long‑term maintenance.
• Some argue that all software is ephemeral, so focus on skills, relationships, and life outside work.
• Others push back: spending decades on work that’s neither useful nor enjoyable feels like wasting one’s finite time and agency.

Fraud, grants, and budget incentives

• Multiple anecdotes about government and academic projects where hours or costs were padded to “use up the budget.”
• Strong discussion of perverse incentives: underspending leads to future budget cuts, so managers rationally overspend or stretch work, sometimes flirting with illegality.
• Examples include universities “maximizing” grants, SBIR rules leading to duplicated equipment, and public-sector projects where saving money is punished.

Contracting, outsourcing, and finance games

• Recurrent pattern: employees or contractors are “let go” then rehired via big vendors at higher total cost.
• Reasons cited: headcount caps, OPEX vs CAPEX treatment, vendor-consolidation policies, legal limits on contractor tenure, and political optics.
• Many describe large banks, governments, and militaries cycling people between employee and contractor status, often destroying institutional knowledge while increasing spend.
• Cloud services and now AI are seen as another way to bypass procurement friction and budget controls, often leading to silent overspend.

Startups, VCs, and “poker” companies

• Several distinguish between ambitious but doomed startups and outfits structurally designed as fee machines, tax write‑offs, or investor grifts.
• Discussion of VC fee structures that reward raising and deploying capital, plus even more conflicted models where portfolio companies pay “services” back to their investors.
• Some incubators and public innovation programs are portrayed as routing money to large incumbents rather than real startups.

Moral responsibility and whistleblowing

• Sharp debate: some say employees in fraudulent or harmful setups have a duty to expose wrongdoing; others stress legal risk, weak whistleblower protections, and personal survival.
• Common view: you’re not culpable if you didn’t know, but once you suspect fraud you face a hard trade‑off between ethics and self‑preservation.

Broader reflections

• Thread circles back to “bullshit jobs,” the ubiquity of waste, and whether capitalism or human nature is “inherently corrupt.”
• Many conclude: learn what you can, get paid, try not to harm people, and don’t tie your entire identity to any one job.