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Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#21

Post by tptacek »

SamBam wrote: post #14
haolez wrote: post #5

I like this take from Carlos Slim on charity: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-3852 Basically, the best way to do charity is to first accumulate a lot of wealth. Only then will you be able to move the important pointers. Obviously controversial, but still refreshing to see a different take.

But then you get folks like Sam Bankman-Fried, who long claimed exactly this as his motivation for his crypto business. The question is, is it likely, or even possible, to be motivated to make lots and lots of money, and then have that process of earning lots and lots of money not affect you? Is everyone who chases a seven-figure-income destined to eventually become an asshole?

The problem with the EA/Longtermist formulation of this idea is that it encourages people to take destructive jobs to minmax the potential dollars they will be able to donate in the future. The underlying idea is sound: the most efficient way for a software developer to donate hours to charity is in fact to use those hours to generate revenue, and send the money to charity. You've already got the job you've got; a supposedly altruistic motivate isn't corrupting your choices the way it does for people like SBF.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#22

Post by JStanton617 »

dbg31415 wrote: post #9

It's hard... because you want to give your time to non-profits, but inevitably they won't be able to support or enhance what you do once you leave. Then that leaves them in a worse spot. I do a lot of work with an animal shelter, and I remember 10-ish years ago some fancy agency came in and donated a new website... only, it took staff time to help gather requirements, and test, and we all had to go through training..…

This exactly. For most small non-profs, basic IT upkeep - i.e. cleaning adware, patching vulns, getting backups set up and tested - is going to be so much useful than occasional airdropped code with no regular/timely maintenance plan

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#23

Post by Orinocco »

Digital Candle is a great service for providing free tech advice to charities: https://www.digitalcandle.org.uk/

You can sign up for a one hour call with a charity which has a problem/needs advice. There's no committment after that but you can get more involved with that charity if you like/it's appropriate

I've volunteered with it a few times, all felt productive/ hopefully helpful to the charities involved

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#24

Post by etna_ramequin »

tyingq wrote: post #19

It's been a while, but the most rewarding experience I had in this space was engaging directly with a small local charity. I just pitched them the idea of me getting 10 minutes with every worker that had to use a PC as part of what the charity did. I used the time to interview them, and try to identify something that affected the largest swath of workers. As it turned out, what I helped them with wasn't code, but a b…

Sounds like a great idea! What sort of questions did you ask during the interview?

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#26

Post by tyingq »

etna_ramequin wrote: post #24
tyingq wrote: post #19

It's been a while, but the most rewarding experience I had in this space was engaging directly with a small local charity. I just pitched them the idea of me getting 10 minutes with every worker that had to use a PC as part of what the charity did. I used the time to interview them, and try to identify something that affected the largest swath of workers. As it turned out, what I helped them with wasn't code, but a b…

Sounds like a great idea! What sort of questions did you ask during the interview?

Started with some open questions about the most frustrating things about the computers/apps, then leading into "show me, on this PC", so I could see which of those complaints I could do anything about.

Then a tally at the end to see what was practical to fix, commonly disliked experiences across users, etc.

The one thing I'd do different is ask for maybe 2 rounds of interviews, or longer interviews with 2-3 people to start with. The later interviews I did better, since I understood base concepts better. So I probably missed good info from the people I talked to earliest.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#27

Post by dbg31415 »

JStanton617 wrote: post #22
dbg31415 wrote: post #9

It's hard... because you want to give your time to non-profits, but inevitably they won't be able to support or enhance what you do once you leave. Then that leaves them in a worse spot. I do a lot of work with an animal shelter, and I remember 10-ish years ago some fancy agency came in and donated a new website... only, it took staff time to help gather requirements, and test, and we all had to go through training..…

This exactly. For most small non-profs, basic IT upkeep - i.e. cleaning adware, patching vulns, getting backups set up and tested - is going to be so much useful than occasional airdropped code with no regular/timely maintenance plan

But careful even donating "patch time" since doing security updates and all the rest inherently change things.

Non-profits are pretty bad at documenting requirements, or having any sort of automated testing, so you go in and upgrade some things, or patch some things, and they're still going to need training... and they're still going to need an organization-wide test to make sure everyone can still get what they need out of the tech. Inevitably someone will have some plugin that isn't compatible with the upgraded version, or someone will have some service that needs to get re-built to fire reports nobody knows about until they don't show up in the right inboxes.

Money the org can use to hire a staff member who will be a "permanent" fixture is always going to be better for them than someone coming in and doing work and not sticking around to support it.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#28

Post by kiliantics »

heffer wrote: post #17

If you're in the US or Canada check out FIRST Robotics Mentor Network: https://info.firstinspires.org/mentor-network You would be helping out teams of high school students build and program their robots for competitions. This generally happens around January-April but most teams also work on their skills in the off-season. I do this in an in-person capacity but virtual mentorship opportunities are available as well.…

this is another great one for teaching tech skills, specifically at high schools in lower income areas: https://codenation.org/

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#29

Post by n4r9 »

haolez wrote: post #5

I like this take from Carlos Slim on charity: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-3852 Basically, the best way to do charity is to first accumulate a lot of wealth. Only then will you be able to move the important pointers. Obviously controversial, but still refreshing to see a different take.

For context, Carlos Slim amassed his fortune by building monopolies in Mexico whilst its GDP and average income fared poorly. The country's landline suffered from high usage fees as a consequence. Very dubious whether he is a net positive for the world.

See Wikipedia and associated links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Slim#Reactions

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#30

Post by arolihas »

SamBam wrote: post #14
haolez wrote: post #5

I like this take from Carlos Slim on charity: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-3852 Basically, the best way to do charity is to first accumulate a lot of wealth. Only then will you be able to move the important pointers. Obviously controversial, but still refreshing to see a different take.

But then you get folks like Sam Bankman-Fried, who long claimed exactly this as his motivation for his crypto business. The question is, is it likely, or even possible, to be motivated to make lots and lots of money, and then have that process of earning lots and lots of money not affect you? Is everyone who chases a seven-figure-income destined to eventually become an asshole?

It's possible if you're way of making lots of money doesn't involve scamming or exploiting people.
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