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Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
11–20 of 57 posts
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#12If in America, your options are very limited and the answer very simple: Use your money, time, voice and vote to support a modern public safety net. Every other avenue is a divergence or distraction or otherwise ineffective.
He didn't ask which political platform or policy positions he should support. He asked what he could do to help the under privileged.
And I answered with “what he could do to support the under privileged”.
In some contexts, my suggestion could be used as a political platform, but it isn’t here. It is, however, obviously, politics. How could it not be?
It is strange to me that you contextualize this way. It is no less than obvious, to me, that politics, as a field so concerned with the livelihood of society members, is a (if not the) topic at hand. I am open to other avenues but the success of such efforts remains grim, hence the concern in this post, which is anything but new.
An effort to logically separate politics from the needs of under privileged society members strikes me as a questionable pursuit at best and a damning moral quandary. Can you explain what the point is?
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#13Almost every nonprofit--especially local nonprofits like food banks, hospice care, shelters, legal aid centers, etc--has technology issues. They don't have enough money to pay for IT of any kind, especially in hyper competitive markets like Silicon Valley, and their tech knowledge would be probably laughable to you. If you showed up unannounced at the offices of one of these nonprofits and offered to help them with a…
I would strongly second this.
I had some down-time between jobs a couple of years back, and used it to volunteer at a charity to help out with some basic IT work.
There was some indeed an element of fixing and securing their WordPress-based website, and sorting out their AdWords campaigns. However, the vast majority of the work (by time, not by difficulty) was cleaning up crapware from Windows laptops, getting Dropbox to work correctly across their machines, and sorting out their software licences after they'd been screwed over by a shady ISV.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#14If there are schools/libraries near you that run coding clubs you could go and help teach. If there aren't any around, you could help to start one up.
I have spent several years helping to organise and run a CoderDojo, and it has been a great way to meet new people, and you don't need a heap of technical people to run one, just one or two who can help with the really hard problems.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#15If you're employed, ask your employer to arrange unconscious bias training for all staff. Speak out in support of the under-privileged in your workplace.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#16Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#17The median income worldwide is around $10,000 and a third of the world lives on less than $2/day. If you want to help the underprivileged you have to or your money has to leave the US.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#18The median income worldwide is around $10,000 and a third of the world lives on less than $2/day. If you want to help the underprivileged you have to or your money has to leave the US.
It just shouldn't go to Iran.
And you just have to make sure that any charity you donate to doesn't eventually get revealed to have been a sham where the people running it were secretly funneling the money to armed militants without your knowledge because then you can go to jail for the rest of your life (unless of course your name is Reagan and you funnel arms directly to the militants yourself!)
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#19Ah, this one is easy!
See, there is X money chasing Y resources.
If you feel that you or your colleagues are having an easy life compared to rest of the world which you should confirm by going to difficult parts of the world, here is a plan for you:
Do something so that projects of the company where you work fail. This will offer some competitive advantage to companies elsewhere, probably one from the difficult place? That's the easiest thing you can do.
You can donate money but I don't think it works. You gotta teach a man how to fish. If you destroy your and your colleagues' fish, they'll be forced to buy fish from underprivileged.
Re: Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?
#20The median income worldwide is around $10,000 and a third of the world lives on less than $2/day. If you want to help the underprivileged you have to or your money has to leave the US.
It just shouldn't go to Iran. And you just have to make sure that any charity you donate to doesn't eventually get revealed to have been a sham where the people running it were secretly funneling the money to armed militants without your knowledge because then you can go to jail for the rest of your life (unless of course your name is Reagan and you funnel arms directly to the militants yourself!)
That comment took a weird turn into Iran-Contra.