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Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#111

Post by justincormack »

Tichy wrote: post #87
temphn wrote: post #28

This might be an unpopular opinion, but a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem. Nonprofits are ultimately financially unustainable; they survive on donations and government grants (tax) rather than direct contributions from customers. As such they usually can't scale to employ many people or make a worldwide impact. There are exceptions…

Also, the nonprofit is not under evolutionary pressure to actually solve the problem. They are just under pressure to make people believe they are doing a good thing.

Corporations dont tend to rationally shut down when their market goes away either, there are inefficiencies in the corporate model. Charities do change as demand changes though.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#112

Post by heliodor »

robryan wrote: post #106
chailatte wrote: post #45

Careful, you might make new YC companies' head explode. (YC S11) Interviewstreet is disrupting the recruitment space and create a place where the best hackers get the best jobs (YC S11) Splitterbug private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone Munch On Me (YC S11) Helps You Discover Tasty Dishes Stypi (YC S11) Is Etherpad Reborn Parse (YC S11): A Heroku For Mobile Apps Envolve (YC S11) Launches An API For…

I don't get why internet start ups should be expected to change the world. The vast majority of businesses ever created don't really do anything most would consider truly meaningful or world changing.

I suppose they are not, but we expect more of YC because it is supposed to be funding the best of the best, and people are noticing a decrease in quality over the years. But maybe they are not sharing their big visions with us as much, so we can't appreciate the latest YC batches as much. Nonetheless, I can see some grand visions in the list provided above without much scrutiny. Take car insurance for example, it may not sound like a worthy cause, but the economic efficiency gains would be huge if someone disrupts the car insurance industry! Maybe people can't appreciate the domains as much as before.

And maybe a better way to judge the market is to look at what Sequoia is funding over the years.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#113

Post by Tichy »

justincormack wrote: post #111
Tichy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the nonprofit is not under evolutionary pressure to actually solve the problem. They are just under pressure to make people believe they are doing a good thing.

Corporations dont tend to rationally shut down when their market goes away either, there are inefficiencies in the corporate model. Charities do change as demand changes though.

Eventually the corporation will be bankrupt, though. Still, I don't claim that corporations are without fail.

It is still necessary to think about "morals" (I don't like morals, because I think they are only necessary if you don't understand what is really going on). Otherwise, why not join the Mafia and make millions selling drugs?

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#114

Post by jianshen »

sliverstorm wrote: post #16
kamens wrote: post #10

We'd love to have anyone passionate about changing the world of education apply to Khan Academy. http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs

^ Education is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Short of inventing the next evaporation fridge or water purification straw for developing nations, this is going to be one of your better bets if you want to directly help people.

Love this comment. The Internet is probably the fastest way to scale education and ideas. Getting Internet access to those who don't have it is just as critical in my opinion. Internet literacy will be key to a good education in generations to come.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#115

Post by ianterrell »

kalvin wrote: post #14

When you say "these sorts of issues", it sounds like you're talking about injustice everywhere. You want to fix injustices-- food for the hungry-- instead of "adding happiness"-- better food photos for people with smartphones. In which case, I FEEL YOU. I'm infinitely more interested in SwipeGood than I am in Zynga. But everyone makes their own choices. Some people just aren't that concerned with injustice. Some peop…

I used to work for Samasource; they're all good people and are hiring a Rails dev if anyone's interested after this thread: http://www.samasource.org/about/positions/RubyEngineer

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#116

Post by keeptrying »

I think your answer is within your question. Do what the charity water guy did. Go volunteer abroad. Maybe 1 month or 2 months to start with. If you dont like it then at least you've helped out for 2months and you'll know your not meant to volunteer fulltime.

As you see how these people live and their problems you'll come up with a solution because your a software engineer - thats what we do.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#117

Post by ippisl »

temphn wrote: post #28

This might be an unpopular opinion, but a nonprofit/charity will never make as big a difference as a true for-profit vehicle that is pointed at the same problem. Nonprofits are ultimately financially unustainable; they survive on donations and government grants (tax) rather than direct contributions from customers. As such they usually can't scale to employ many people or make a worldwide impact. There are exceptions…

The green revolution , in agriculture , which saved an estimated billion files , was made by a non-profit.

Paul pollack , and his non-profit IDE, got 20 million people out poverty by offering radically affordable irrigation technology and building private markets for such products.

There have been new kinds of non-profits that combine a non-profit goal + financial sustainability. They appear to work better in some cases.

For those who are interested in sucssesful non-profit business models and organizations, nextbillion.net is a good site.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#118

Post by abstractbill »

chailatte wrote: post #45

Careful, you might make new YC companies' head explode. (YC S11) Interviewstreet is disrupting the recruitment space and create a place where the best hackers get the best jobs (YC S11) Splitterbug private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone Munch On Me (YC S11) Helps You Discover Tasty Dishes Stypi (YC S11) Is Etherpad Reborn Parse (YC S11): A Heroku For Mobile Apps Envolve (YC S11) Launches An API For…

And.....drumroll........ ZeroCater (YC W11) Raises $1.5 Million For No-Hassle Office Lunches

Thanks. My head has not exploded. Here's why:

- Employees love us. Often they go from getting no free lunch, to getting daily hassle-free meals without having to lift a finger, just because we make it so much easier for the companies we serve.

- Companies love us. See above. Often we enable free food as a completely new employee benefit. Other times we free up an hour or so of an admin's time every day.

- Restaurants love us. We give them a large predictable stream of food orders, and work closely with them to improve their service. We pass on the feedback we get from employees (comments and ratings on each meal), so suddenly our vendors are getting a very strong direct signal telling them what people like and dislike.

We're not curing cancer, but I'm happy.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?

#120

Post by tomkinstinch »

If you're in the US, take a look at jobs in the DOE National Lab system. There are many of good hackers working on real problems. Bioenergy, materials science, systems biology, cyber security, supercomputing, and computer science are all happening at the Labs. It's a little like academia, but much more applied and practical.
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