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Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#181

Leave your programming at work. Find a cause you believe in or a political candidate you think will do good, and volunteer for that. Knock on doors. Call people. Do research. Organize events and people. Donate money. Change other people's minds. A lot of these social good things need people to get involved, not software to be written.

This is an understated answer. It's not enough to be a strong engineer, solving problems well often means having a lot of context from several backgrounds and experiences.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#182
post #167

I have posted this before, countless times, but techies who want to volunteer their skills and knowledge to advance the democratic process should think about joining the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should…

And if you're not American?

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#183
Study anticapitalism and go on from there. I`d recommend anarchism and World History.

Ps.: In tech & programming specifically, I think Free Software is a beautiful idea.

Ps.: I`ll add, why I think this is(my original point), is that I think it's very nice to understand(or try to understand) what is the `structure/mechaniscs of the world`, I mean, to me it would be the same to study capitalism as it is to study anticapitalism(that is, the more you see how it works, the more you`ll see stuff that is flawed), some would disagree with this, of course. Contrary to what many think, ideology to me means NOT seeing reality as it is(so I'm not talking about intantile, superficial, ideas/agenda here), so I think it's absolutely fair the everybody should take some understanding of it based on people who wanted to figure out found out, even if not 100%. Since the more correct is your model of things, the better you can act on them(you can't engineer a car with wrong math, for example). To me, personally, getting my mind out of the techie neophile mindset and knowing broader and deeper stuff gives me plenty of ideas on things to do. Even more so, that since I'm using this 'footing', I can then try to see if it matches reality and goes on to have real-world effects! ;P But anyway, what I`m saying is sort of a longer road, to try to get interested and understand other topics and then look to your habilities and see what you can do with them about the other thing. That's where the project I'm trying to work on came from and it's really meant to be a drop in the ocean and a simple program etc, but it's something I really care about since it's tied to deep layers of my person and perspective on `world`, `society`, `individuals`, `species`, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#184
post #157

Work on what pays the highest and then donate that money to the most effective charity. According to GiveWell.org, that charity is currently the Against Malaria Foundation, which will statistically save a life for every $3500 it receives going forward. It is ridiculously cheap to save a life that would otherwise not be saved. I highly recommend Sam Harris' interview with Will Macaskill on this topic (effective altrui…

This is the right answer imo. Other options might make you feel better personally since you'll have more direct involvement, but just making as much money as you can with your skill set and donating that to the charities that are most effective will probably result in better outcomes than donating your time.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#185
post #176
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. We have had a horrible track record with tech volunteers, in part because our mission is not tech-centric, so they don't get any glory. It doesn't mean there isn't anything for them to do - it's just that the story isn't about technology ... or them. There is a mountain of boring, yet critically important work waiting for people to just roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

Yeah, the last hackathon-type thing I was at, we had a few projects that desperately needed a little bit of TLC from someone with solid programming chops to help push them forward. Instead, we ended up with half a dozen prototypes of new projects solving problems no one had.

Yep - that's been our experience with hackathons as well :(

"Oh goody, a bunch of half-finished abandonware ..."

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#186

Although it sounds like they are working on some important issues, I'm not sure I'd want to work for an organization who posts racially targeted messages -- which presumably they think are ok with some races filled into the blanks, but not others. https://twitter.com/JazmynLatimer/status/864585574581059584 It seems like non-racist messaging would be a better approach!

https://twitter.com/JazmynLatimer/status/864856313121054720 The initial tweet seems straightforward enough to me (as a white person); black/brown folks are underrepresented in most companies and thus they'd love for more to join. Reaching out sometimes helps accomplish that. Hiring is not a zero sum game. If targeting underrepresented folks in order to encourage them to join is this offensive to you, imagine actually…

I agree with targeting underrepresented groups. What I don't agree with is statements that are (allegedly) "okay" when one race is filled in, but not okay when another race is filled in. To me, that is the definition of a racist statement... it's pretty clear that filling in "white people" would make this statement unacceptable... so why is it okay to fill in other specific races. There are plenty of ways to characterize a place as welcoming without reducing people to their race.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#187
post #167

I have posted this before, countless times, but techies who want to volunteer their skills and knowledge to advance the democratic process should think about joining the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should…

And if you're not American?

Then liccbb's suggestion doesn't apply to you. Look through the other comments and see what you can find. Or you can consider looking at the organization that liccbb is talking about, and see if there exists something similar in your own country, or start your own movement.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#188
Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is...

Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing open source software to help local governments in third world countries have free elections and fight malaria or donating 50% of your salary, you're creating value and "bettering our species" just by doing something that someone is willing to pay you for. In fact, that's how most of the world's wealth is created.

Not saying you shouldn't volunteer or donate your salary (I personally try to donate a decent chunk of my salary to givedirectly) but -- unless you're a nigerian hacker or malware developer or something -- just because you're getting paid or working on something that isn't an absolute necessity doesn't mean you aren't doing social good. Just something to think about.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#189
post #167

I have posted this before, countless times, but techies who want to volunteer their skills and knowledge to advance the democratic process should think about joining the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should…

Party neutral?

They list MoveOn as a key partner: https://github.com/ProgressiveCoders/functions/issues/196

This document clearly states the organisation is founded by Berine Sanders supporters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8iL3kTWO0Y9aYe8lndcUWTJ...

And they built something called the "Resistance Calendar", containing events like: https://tockify.com/resistance.calendar/detail/384/149523120...

I mean for the most part it seems to be stuff I would support (personally), but to call it party neutral is at best true by way of technicality.

I doubt you find many Republican events on that calendar. Of course, I wouldn't expect to given the name of the group, but let's not play games and pretend it isn't partisan?

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#190
post #152
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. There are many incredible organizations doing great work in the code for good space, and not solely in the non-profit or government sectors. I’ll second the reference to Code for America. I have a colleague who did their fellowship and learned a ton while working with some great local governmental agencies. They’ve also recently launched a job board to curate high impact mission-driven jobs and jobs with local…

Hi! I lead engineering on Code for America's work building services improving the social safety net, so happy to answer any questions. I'd also mention that we're hiring directly for teams at CfA building large-scale services serving the most vulnerable Americans. My team works on radically improving access to the food stamp program, a massive anti-poverty program, but one with only about 65% of eligible Californians…

you should include postings from http://www.calhr.ca.gov/ . there are tons of programming jobs there in different classification.
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