Ask HN: Where can I work as a software engineer to combat large global problems?

fyi there are projections showing that in the 2040s (if not 2030s) the food supply could collapse from global warming, causing mass starvation

Mass Organ Harvesting and Mass Killing in Xinjiang.

If you are familiar with ICS security / systems, you can literally see the incinerators with dashboards of “humans per hour” and things like that.

Anyone with data wrangling skills (BigQuery, DataPrep, stuff like that), setting up cloud infra, or even just really good hard-code internetting research skills would be appreciated.

001-alias-aw@outlook.com

I actually wouldn’t have minded posting my real name, but it seemed somehow like it would take away from my post unless I used a cool anonymous (but not really) alias.

Hi talking_panda! I found myself in a very similar position four years ago, quitting my career at the time (the electric/autonomous vehicle industry) to find more fulfilling, meaningful, and ultimately tangibly impactful work. Along the way, I found a lot of answers to my questions from Effective Altruism — using evidence and reason to do the most good.

I like their framework of looking for cause areas that are large (you're already looking for this), tractable (so your work might actually result in something), and neglected (where your marginal impact is highest). That'll probably lead you toward:

1) Global poverty & public health: The evidence here is vast, and the marginal impact is huge in the developing world, where simple interventions like giving people money (GiveDirectly) or anti-malarial bednets (Against Malaria Foundation) save a life at the cost of ~$2,000. GiveWell does an excellent job evaluating these charities. This is where I ended up, but in the for-profit sector, at Zipline (flyzipline.com). We deliver essential medicines and vaccines by drone to the rural poor in Rwanda & Ghana. Some of our projects are funded by great organizations in this space like Gates & GAVI. I also donate ~50% of my income to GiveWell top charities, along with...

2) Farm animal welfare: Depending on how much you value an animal's life and well-being in relation to a person, the vast suffering of farmed animals is a huge problem that is also quite neglected and tractable. According to Animal Charity Evaluators (the GiveWell of this space), the most effective organizations are those like The Humane League (corporate outreach for improved standards) or The Good Food Institute (promoting and developing meat-alternatives, e.g. Impossible Burgers, or cultured meat).

3) Improving the long-term future: If you value the lives of future generations, then you might choose to focus on mitigating existential risks, i.e. those that risk extincting humanity. AI risk mitigation, e.g. OpenAI, gets a lot of focus in the bay area for obvious reasons, but there are many other opportunities here, e.g. reducing global pandemic risk, nuclear security, etc.

Hope this helps, and of course, I'd be happy to provide more links, articles, books, blogs, or podcasts on any of this! Or even better, put you in touch with some of the folks who work at these organizations

Thanks mattef.

1. Zipline looks interesting! I've added it to my target companies.

2. I'm a vegetarian and I feel happy to see innovations like Impossible Burgers. But if I understand correctly, biochemists can contribute most to solving these challenges.

3. Do you have more resources for the third bullet? I'm apprehensive of this since some of the existential risks might be speculative and unreal.

Hehe