Ask HN: What can I do as a software engineer to help the underpriviliged?

As a white, midwestern software engineer, it's easy to live my life day to day without ever leaving my little bubble. What are some ways that I can apply my skills to help the under-priviliged?

Leave your bubble.

There is almost certainly some volunteer group in your area that could use an extra pair of hands. You might be tempted early on to offer suggestions to improve their efforts through better software; don't. Instead, just watch, ask, listen, and learn. Once you've got enough experience to be confident that you understand end-to-end how everything works in whatever group you volunteer for, you'll probably know the right place to apply your skills as a developer (which very well may just consist of, "um, you need automated backups").

Keep in mind that their priorities are different from yours. Things that you would probably consider essential or best practices are, for them, distractions and nuisances and costs to which they're super sensitive: updates, security, anything that's new and requires effort to learn.

Software developers tend to see themselves as "systems thinkers", and think they can always improve any given thing by swooping in and applying some new software to it. That is often not actually the case, but they don't get their hands dirty enough and stick around long enough to realize it.

You can apply your skills to maximize income and donate resources. I donate ~$25K/year to various animal causes.

I second the thought of leaving your bubble because there is more opportunity. I am a former midwesterner, and I live near Seattle now. There are way more opportunities at the coasts then the midwest.

He didn't ask which political platform or policy positions he should support. He asked what he could do to help the under privileged.

Almost 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 any tech issues they've been having (fixing a website, making the printer work, etc) they would be most grateful. Of course it's better to ingratiate yourself to the hardworking teams over there by making yourself part of the community first, you don't want to show up like the messiah who's going to fix all their problems for them. Above comments address this.