Not everyone who comes to the Peace Corps office in San Francisco has lost a job. Some grew tired of long days working for startups that sometimes turned out not to be the companies they thought they were joining.

"Many of them are tired of the rat race," said Laura McClure, a Peace Corps regional recruiter in San Francisco. "They want to do the Peace Corps to make up for things they have not done for the last few years of their lives. They use the word `meaningful' a lot."

That was part of the motivation for many of those disillusioned with the business world they experienced in the booming late 1990s.

"At the end of the day, I asked myself what good I had done," said Jennifer Fox, who left her job at an e-commerce company that sold outdoor gear on the Internet.

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